Tricky Business  

This is my first Dave Barry novel. I was expecting a much more humorous something, although the plot is pretty well developed. Will have to read more Dave Barry novels before I can pass a comment. I had really liked the Tim Allen starrer movie, written by Dave Barry called Big Trouble.

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Pay It Forward 

A do-gooder movie, guess its primarily aimed at kids - before they get disillusioned with the world, 'cause none of the adults are going to believe the 'pay a help forward', for a help you had originally received, in this materialistic world. Movie is kind of slow, has Kevin Spacey with a scarred face and a scarred teenage, Helen Hunt is the beaten-wife-alcoholic Mom and has the super kid Haley Joel Osment. Whatever it is I love that li'l guy, even if he plays so mature-adult like characters - the kid is so deep, man and his acting - was he really acting it?

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In Cold Blood

Wow! A killer of a movie. Directed by Richard Brooks, adapted from a story written by Truman Capote, who got his inspiration from a real life mass-homicide, this movie really lives upto its name in conveying the feeling.

Robert Blake and Scott Wilson play the film's petty thieves turned murderers, both of them have given performances par excellence. It is ironical that, one of the killers in the film, Robert Blake was recently accused of murder of his wife in real life. The editing, camera - black and white has tremendous potential when it comes to such heavy films and then the jazzy score everything together makes this movie a class apart. Its almost Hitchcockian, at times even better than that, because unlike a Hitchcock movie which ends after the murder is solved, this goes on with the lives of murderers - like a character study and ends with very realistic hangings of the murderers. Even the mass-murder committed by the two are so believable, its almost like being inside the skin of the murderers. A brilliant film.

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The Sting 

A good entertainer, starring two of the most handsome blokes Hollywood ever produced - Paul Newman and Robert Reford. Directed by George Roy Hill, it portrays the twosome as conmen in 1930s Chicago, in a plot to avenge the murder of one of their close friends. Its a wonderful entertainer, one of the original 'brilliant conmen cooking up an unbelievable heist' movie. It won 7 Oscars in 1973 including the Best Picture and the Best Director.

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"Play It Again, Sam" 

A very Woody-Allenish translation of Casablanca set in San Francisco! To complete the theme Bogart himself makes appearance as Allen's pep-guru. This is the first film Woody Allen and Diane Keaton starred together, a prolific partnership which would churn out Oscar winners like Annie Hall.

I have reserved all the movies in the library which are remotely linked to Woody Allen, the man knows to do his stuff. In this movie Allen plays a recently dumped-divorcee, with a low self confidence and a track record as a total failure with ladies. Diane Keaton and Tony Roberts are his faithful friends who set Allen up with one girl after the other, unfailingly the set-up is screwed by Allen on the first date itself. The movie ending is an exact copy of Casablanca with the fog, the propellers of the plane roaring in the background and the inevitable goodbye. Good watch.

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Last of the Mohicans 

It has been 16 or more years since I read Last of the Mohicans. What I remember is a passionate story line, reading almost like a thriller and I think I finished the whole book in a day or two. This movie starring Daniel Day-Lewis has none of that magic. It couldnot kindle any empathy towards any of the characters(atleast not in my mind). At times I was wondering why were the native Indians siding with the French and the English and fighting their own kind. Maybe that was how the history was, I don't know. (No wonder there were no more Mohicans left!)

Daniel Day-Lewis is ok, nothing great, that also goes for Madeline Stowe,the leading lady. I don't know why the film failed to impress me. Maybe because I had read the book in my budding teenage years that I associated a lot more passion and romance to the story than it really had?!? I think Last of the Mohicans had a lot more potential, there were fights we viewers could have identified with, lives which we could have empathized with - but unluckily, thanks to movie we did not.

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Punch-Drunk Love 

What does punch-drunk mean? I thought it was like passing out drinking punch at some goofy school party. Then I read somewhere it meant taking a lot of punches on the head during a boxing match that the boxer will be in a delirious kind of state - thats what punch-drunk really means. Silly me. Saw Adam Sandler's Punch-Drunk love expecting the usual Sandler fare. But I was not counting on the director Paul Anderson, him of the offbeat Magnolia and Boogie Nights fame.

The movie is wrought with imagery, a thunderous car crash at the beginning of the movie which doesn't seem to have any immediate connection with film, an abandoned harmonium which Sandler's character adopts etc etc. The movie seems like an alternate-director's take on comedy and not a bad effort at that. The movie also has Emily Watson as Sandler's love interest. Once you get the hang of the imagery or if you are accomodating enought to accept the off-beat character of the movie, you realize it is interesting. I liked the movie and I think that there are not more than two ways of appreciating this film, either you like it or you don't.

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In The Name of The Father 

A group of totally innocent people who spent fifteen long years behind bars charged with a horrible crime that they did not commit and the smouldering issue of Northern Ireland make this memorable film etch deep into the minds and memories of any viewer with a conscience. It is adapted from the autobiography of Gerry Conolon, a simple Irish street thief, whose only crime was being at wrong place at the wrong time.

Daniel Day-Lewis plays Gerry Conolon in the movie, I could not gave imagined anyone else playing the part, ok except perhaps Sean Penn. Conolon and four of his friends are wrongly accused by the British police of bombing a pub in Guildford. Later the police also arrest and imprison Conolon's father who came to rescue him and few of his family members. It is a strong movie making a very strong statement. It does gravitate towards being sympathetic to the Irish and demonizing the English. But as a dialogue in the movie goes, " English never willfully left their conquered lands without a fight, they had to beaten out of these places"(Its a transcription as I remember it, not the exact words) , so I doesn't feel bad at all sympathizing for the Irish.

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Soheir Khashoggi's Mirage 

I'd ask all women to read this novel by Soheir Khashoggi, men too can read, but this is a must read for all women who love words and stories. It tells the story of Amira, a Muslim woman, rich, married into aristocracy, her harrowing escape into freedom and her new life afterwards.

Mirage unravels before a world were the women of the family are confined to an all-female living quarters, with little or no outside contact, how daughters are lost to marriage( (probably to a middle aged or older man) before they can have a decent education or even learn the basics of life. Amira leads a comparitively easier life as she belongs to the rich upper echelons of society but the story shows that even she is not free of the tentacles of a society which is bent upon imprisoning their women. It reads like a thriller, I read it non-stop till about 2 am, when I finally finished it and went to sleep. Mirage is a window in to a culture which is so alien to us that we might doubt its existence, go read it and thank your stars for having born in a society where even amongst all the other travails you can still exercise your free will.

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Lost In Translation 

Two words. Good Movie. A very natural movie, with its under exposed shots, reflections on the windows and slow but not so-boring pace give it a sense of life as if you are living it. Sophia Coppola's second directorial venture (not counting her first short) might not make it to the top ten greatest movies of all time, but it is definitely one of the year's best.

Two strangers who share a common language - English and a common feeling - loneliness, are brought together by chance, in the throbbing metropolis of Tokyo. Bill Murray plays a role which seems to have been written just for him and the second character in question, Scarlett Johansson is a pleasant discovery. In choosing her it seems like Sophia Coppola's Italian lineage took precedence because unlike the usual Hollywood starlets, Ms.Johanssen is not extremely thin nor does have the fresh label straight out of the plastic surgeon's office. Bill Murray's character is so credible that next time you meet him you might call him "Hey, Mr.Bob Harris!" I don't know how much I can relate to Johansson's character, but then, we are all different persons and it could be very much possible to find a mirror image of her character somewhere in real life. The only thing I didn't understand is the opening shot, showing Johansson's curvaceous booty - alright, lets give that one away as Ms Coppola's way of expressing her artistic freedom, afterall she gave us a good movie.

The movie also provides fleeting but memorable glances of Japan, its pop culture, its urbanism and also its serene side which Ms. Johansson's character experiences in the gardens of Kyoto. There is not much of a story except the escapades of the twosome in the strange but interesting city and their humurous brushes with the language and culture of Japan. There are lot of genuine funny moments in the film which never venture anywhere near slapsticky, my favorite one is one in the beginning of the film where Bob Harris is shooting a video commercial for Suntory Whiskey. The director of the ad-film spits out a paragraph of intense Japanese oratory and the female translator, translates that to Bob Harris as, "he wants you to turn towards the camera". Harris is flabbergasted, he asks his translator "Is that all he said, I thought there was more?". Exactly what a person whose command of Japanese begins and ends with sayanora would ask, which I think includes the majority of us. It is an extremely sensitive issue to find fun in language discrepencies, especially that involving a foreign culture without sounding offensive or racist. Sophia Coppola treads that thin line in this movie and leaves us at a point where we might want to travel to this interesting country. Whether it deserves an Oscar is an altogether different question, watch it and decide for yourselves.

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Sweet Sixteen 

Ken Loach directs this coming of age movie set in Glasgow. Martin Compston, the fifteen year old who plays Liam - the main character, is very convincing despite this being his first film. Loved his sincere smile. The story is about a boy, brought up a single mother, who is in jail as the movie begins and goes on to show how he becomes entangled in drug selling and his miseries stemming from that as well as his life.

If not for the subtitles, I would not have understood half the dialogues as the accent is so very foreign and at times you (the Americans watching the movie) may doubt whether they are speaking English or not, at the same time it is endearing too. It is a movie about simple dreams of life, a boy who dreams of making it big, his struggles, his relationships, his life - a good movie, I should try out more from Ken Loach.

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Green Card Fever 

When I saw the trailer of this movie sometime back I had written it off as a waste of time, it was such a badly made trailer. The movie has proven me wrong, it was not bad, it turned out to be okay. Vikram Dasu, is an illegal immigrant who lands in US with the dreams of getting a green card but is framed by a lawyer who treats him as a servant and is later caught by the INS. In the middle of all this he also manages to fall in love with a beautiful Indian girl, played by Purva Bedi. Directed by Bala Rajasekharuni, Green Card Fever exposes the frailities and corruption with in the US Immigration system and the unquenchable thirst of people of developing world to gain that ticket to their ultimate dreams - a U.S Green card and the lengths they will go to get it.

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Bananas 

This sophomore effort of Woody Allen as a director is one of his funniest films ever. Woody Allen is a Feilding Mellish, product tester turned President-of-a-Latin-American country, both situations guarentee plenty of laughs, given his penchant for comedy and wisecracks. There lot of quotable funny situations in the movie like,

Nancy: Have you ever been to Denmark?
Fielding Mellish: I've been, yes — to the Vatican.
Nancy: The Vatican? The Vatican is in Rome.
Fielding Mellish: Well, they were doing so well in Rome that they opened one in Denmark.


Fielding Mellish: I once stole a pornographic book that was printed in braille. I used to rub the dirty parts.

....so on and so forth. Although there are telivised coups, murders and other bloody situations in the movie, blood is not seen anywhere so as to keep with the witty nature of the movie, I suppose.

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The Poisonwood Bible 

I thought Barbara Kingsolver lived or did live for a considerable while in Congo to have written this novel, set in Congo, with such precision. I was amazed to find out, she did not, I have to salute her imagination.

One of the best written novels I have read in a while, Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible follows the lives of 4 sisters, three of them teenagers who are uprooted from their all-is-well-with-the-world-and-coming-out-parties life and is transplanted into the raw wilderness and the wild energy of Belgian Congo of the sixties. The reason they and their parents move to Congo is because the head of the family,Rev.Nathan Price, who is a Baptist preacher takes upon his shoulders to deliver all heathen Congolese people from evil and make them everyone of them, true Christians. The chapters of the novel are fashioned as narrations made by each girl as they struggle and acclimatize their way through Africa and their lives.

The novel also opens a small but true window on the specter of American leadership extending their strong arm to control the rest of the world. You thought Iraq was something new(well atleast there were some rotten parts to it, like the Presidential family), well Kingsolver got news for you. Patrice Lumumba, Belgian Congo's first democratically elected leader after its independence in 1960, who won with an overwhelming majority, was overthrown, later murdered and an US backed puppet dictator installed as President with the blessings of the illustrious Ike. All of this happened within a few months of country's independence from Belgium. Thanks to Congo's diamonds, gold and other precious natural resources. The novel follows the Price family through these turbulent times, how each of them carve out their own ways within the smouldering soul of Africa to emerge with their own voices and indebted to the great dark continent.

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Dead man Walking 

Saw this Tim Robbins' movie for the third time in the last 5 years, it never ceases to move me. Death, the great leveller, doing his master act. I saw another movie The Chamber just before watching Dead man Walking. Both of them dealt with people sentenced to death. While in The Chamber, where the convicted man is put to death in a gas chamber, in the other one he's put to death by lethal injection. As Sean Penn says in his final words in Dead Man Walking, to kill people is wrong - whether the killing is done by you, me or the government. Still I am not sure whether I support the death penalty or not. Movies like these make me wonder, why do we walk our way through lives without caring much about others or doing some small gesture from our parts that might seem like a giant benevolence to the other, why are we too busy?

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Skins

Sometimes quite unexpectedly you come across a brilliant movie, like a shard of diamond in the ashes. Skins, the sophomore low budget indie from director Chris Eyre is just that. I didn't know a thing about Chris Eyre nor anything about the writer of the novel, Adrian.C.Louis, after watching this movie I have decided I am going to find more about the works of these two people.

Before Christopher Columbus came to America in late 1400s, there were 100 million Indians in North and South America combined. At the beginning of twentieth century their size had dimnished to a small group of 3 million, thanks to all the massacres that paved the way for the establishment of the brave New world! Skins tell the story of these 'natives' - actually two Sioux Indian brothers in a very current setting of Pine Ridge Indian reservation, South Dakota,one of the poorest counties in US which could put any third world country to shame.

Rudy the younger brother is a cop, where Mogi the elder one is an incurable alcholic like most of the other Indians at Pine Ridge. The film is an eye-opener about the people of the land, now reduced to nothing, battling the grim and horrible conditions charecteristic of present day Indian reserves. Alcoholism is a major killer of the people with about 75% of all deaths attributed to it, Graham Greene as Mogi has given a heart rendering yet humorous portrayal as an alchoholic Indian. Eric Schweig as Rudy and all the other actors have given true to life performances. This movie could be called a true life 'reverse western', it is time Indians got their due. A masterpiece but don't expect horse chases, burning teepes or indian men in colorful war paints, this is the otherside of US of A, as close as you can get it. Way to go Chris Eyre!

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Gangs of Newyork, Holes and some others 

Recovering from a surgery, kinda lazing around (read bedrest). Saw a lot of movies lying in bed...writing about everyone of them will be gargantuan task for a "patient in recovery" buhahaha. The list of movies I saw in the past week as in-bed entertainment is as follows,

+ + Gangs of New York: A concoction of history, Leonardo de Caprio, the Irish and NY of 1850's mixed in plenty of blood grime, dirt and vengeance. Coming from Martin Scorsese this epic movie is a good entertainer. Daniel Day-Lewis is unrecognizable as the butcher. A bit too long maybe, but then it is a historical movie.

+ + Rear Window: The Hitchcock masterpiece starting James Stewart as a bed ridden man in cast watching his neighbors through his rear window. He suspects that one of his neighbors has murdered his wife. It has far less suspense than some other Hitchcock movies, like Vertigo, Strangers on the Train etc but technically perfect movie nevertheless. Has Grace Kelly in it too.

+ + +Holes: A Disney movie for kids, about a detention camp in AZ where the supervisor believes that the inmates could become better citizens by digging holes in the desert. We do not know the real intentions until later. An interesting movie a lot better than kid flicks like Spy Kids.

+ + Take the money and run: A Woody Allen movie about a career thief. Funny of course but have seen funnier ones from Mr. Allen before.

+ + The Son's Room: The Italian director, Nanni Moretti stars and act in this Palme d'Or winner Italian movie about a psychoanalyst who faces a tragic situation in his own life. It is a no frills flick. which I found quite slow moving at times, which inturn reflects the reality that I'm becoming more of an American movie goer who wants things fast-paced.

+ + Pookkalam Varavayi: One of those Malayalam movies made to showcase baby Shamli in the late '80s. I was thinking while watching the film that had it been in US Jayaram could be sued and tried for child molestation, kidnapping and a lot of other related charges.

- - - Churaliya hai tumne: A pathetic excuse for a movie and two excuses for actors. Makes me feel that even hindi films should conduct entrance test to screen the aspiring actors. Well when lineage is all that matters then we the audience have to suffer. Esha Deol & Zayed Khan, I would give them money if they'd show the grace to leave the film profession and leave us in peace.

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The Hours 

It is an intellectual's movie, sadly I don't fall in that category. On the bright side it is a technically perfect movie - camera work, editing, makeup, music and acting - above average. Three brilliant actresses Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore have given it their best shot, not forgetting Ed Harris. From Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the same name, Stephen Daldry has made a good movie, if only I could understand what it was all about.


The three main characters in the movie, all of them women are tormented by some kind of agony. First there is the writer Virginia Woolf, played by Kidman, in 1920s England writing her novel Mrs.Dalloway. Then there is the 1950s house wife, who is supposedly akin to a character, Julianne Moore, depressed about I-don't-know-what and finally there is the reader, Meryl Streep in 2001 nursing her AIDS ridden friend and throwing a party after he wins a prestigious poetry award. The common thread which connects all the three women (in addition to a surprise connection which is revealed at the end) is their endless angst - the root cause of which I could not find out, expect in Streep's case which maybe becuase nursing a friend fighting a losing battle to AIDS for long years could be taxing on the nurse herself.

This is a kind of movie which is bound to be heaped with a lot of praise from the 'thinking' people, most of which the commoner like me or you would have no clue about. What do these three characters have to worry about so much so that, it drives them to suicide or fleeing their own families? What I think is that, these people have never known real worries, that leaves them plenty of time to ponder over 'non-worries' and conjure up imaginary torments and finally dish out a movie about existential angst. Ah...that favorite subject of writers and poets who have exhausted everything else, is now becoming the staple of Hollywood artsy movies?!?!!

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Count of Monte Cristo 

Alexander Dumas is 19th century France's raciest author, from all that I know about it (Not much!). A la Sidney Sheldon, John Le Carr, Sue Grafton all rolled into one. I had read an abridged version of Monte Christo when I was a kid, didn't have any recollection of it when I sat down to watch the film today.

This Kevin Reynolds film is an out and out entertainer starring Jim Caveizel in the leading role, Guy Pearce is his friend turned betrayer, Ed Harris as the old priest the Monte Cristo meets during his prison term and who becomes his teacher and guide and Luiz Guzman is the ex-pirate turned right hand man of the Count, once he comes back to Paris as the Count of Monte Cristo. There is betrayal, suspense, intrigue, swash buckling sword fights, kidnapping, pirates and a daring prison escape, there is a love lost and found, and there is a man who who gets a treasure, and a life after 13 years of solitary prison sentence - not bad for a two hour entertainer.

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Bowling for Columbine

Micheal Moore is da man. Bowling for Columbine is the one of the best documentaries I have ever seen (the other one is Waco:The Rules of Engagement). Before I go further, tell me what do these things/people have in common? Hitler, Clinton, Columbine and Kosovo? On April 20, 1999 Hitler would have celebrated his 110th birthday. Bill Clinton, the then Commander-in-Chief of United States ordered the largest air raid, the biggest bombing US ever made on Kosovo on the same day. In Littleton, Colorado two Columbine high schools seniors shot and killed twelve students and a teacher and later killed themselves in what came to be known as the worst high school shootout in the history of United States on the very same day. Too much of a day for history to bear, eh?

Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, the perpetrators of the massacre at Columbine were ordinary students and they did not come from broken homes as is often cited in similar crimes. They went bowling at 6 am of the day of the murder at the neighborhood bowling alley. (That accounts for the title of the film) "Bowling for Columbine", explores a gun obsessed country, where kids have easy access to firearms, bomb making materials and is populated with banks which give out a free gun everytime you open a new bank account (if this is not crazy, what is?). Klebold and Harris did extensive preparation for more than a year before, making pipe bombs learning how to make them from the internet. On the day of the massacre they planted two such bombs in the school cafetaria, which due to someone's wild luck didn't go off. Had they exploded instead of 15 people, the death toll would have been hundreds.

The movie is not a psychological exploration of the killers but rather it is a psychological exploration of a country which has gone berserk over guns and gun control(or the lack of it), a country where people won't enquire or go beyond what they are told. This is a movie that wants to wake everyone from their slumber of confirmation to the majority. It shouldn't take the murder of your child to make you realize what 'they' have been hammering into your minds with torrents of misinformation is wrong.

Micheal Moore tells in an interview, in the special features section of the DVD that there was one part he deliberately left out of the movie. The fact that police and the SWAT teams waited for three hours before they entered Columbine highschool after the first 911 call, they even stopped the people who tried to rush in thru' the barricades to save their children. Why did they do that? Afterall, the information they had was there were two or maximum three shooters, there was an army of law enforcement personnel waiting outside....what were they doing outside, when they could have prevented some deaths atleast, like that of the teacher who bled to death in three hours. And everybody else...including all the parents (except 2 or 3 people) followed the orders, they stood and waited obediently behind the "do not cross" yellow tapes. Meanwhile the killers themselves commited suicide one hour after they had started their shooting spree.

Has Columbine taught us anything? Hardly much, I guess. We need more people like Micheal Moore who'd not shy away from speaking the truth. I have to agree with him when he says, "Democrats are the lamest excuse ever for a political party", or "we live in fictitious times, ruled by a fictitious President" or when he warns the President against the war in Iraq, "when the Pope and Dixie Chicks are against your policies, you should know your time is up." Haven't yet posted the reviews of Moore's Stupid White Men and Dude, Where's my Country. Both real good books, hats off to Micheal Moore.

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Monster:Autobiography of an LA Gang Member 

Donning up my protective gear....today I am going to venture out into a volatile terrritory - South Central Los Angeles. Just breezed thru' Sanyika Shakur's best selling book on LA gangs, Monster: Autobiography of an LA Gang Member. Breezed through because there were too many shootings, beating ups and 'general slaying' involved, too much for the weak-hearted-me, almost in every other page, yet I made it to the end without skipping much.

It is an enlightening book, centered on the gang war activities in South Central LA (or the infamous South Central) of late seventies and eighties, as seen from the eyes of 'Monster' Kody Scott(Sanyika Shakur). Its an eyeopener for the rest of United States and the rest of the world, who thinks all is heaven in the United States of America. Shakur is a better story teller than me and just to give the taste of what his world once was, I am going to copy a few lines from the preface of the book.

Helicopters hover heavily above, staccato vibrations of automatic gunfire crack throughout the night, drowned out only by explosions and sirens. There is troop movement throughout the city, and in some areas the figting is intense. The soldiers are engaged in a "civil war". A war without terms. A war fought by any means necessary with anything at their disposal. This conflict has lasted nine years, longer than Vietnam. Though the setting is not jungle per se, its atmosphere is as dangerous and mysterious as any jungle in the world.

Neither side receives funding from any goverment, nor does either side claim any allegiance to any particular religion or socioeconomic system of governement.There are no representatives from either faction in the United Nations nor does either recognize the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Recruitment and conscription begins at eleven years of age.

The infrastructure of their armies are made up mainly of robberies and extortions(this was the seventies). Whereas today they are maintained from the proceeds of major narcotic deals and distribution. Each army has a distinct territory- the boundaries of some large areas are broken by enemy cluster camps. Each army has a flag, to which total allegiance is pledged. Each army has its own language, customs and philospohy and each has its own GNP. The war has been raging on for 21 years. The death toll is in thousands - wounded, uncountable, missing-in-action unthinkable. No one is keeping a tally.

Other than this, the war has been kept from the world, hidden like an ugly scar across the belly of an otherwise beautiful woman. Under the guise of the showpiece for the world where prosperity is easily found as water in a stream, America, for all her ostensible beauty has an ugly scar across her belly that she has tried repeatedly to suppress from curious onlookers."

There you go, this is not the description of a third world country embroiled in civil war, this was every night in South Central, twenty years ago. Today Shakur says the streets of his old neighbourhood are lined with luxury cars(instead of the stolen ones of his youth), dope dealers in Gucci shoes and troops with AK-47 assault weapons. What was a gang then, is a now an army. Much of the book reads like a novel, if you like being on the otherside of life, to find out the truth why people behave the way they do, this is a revealing read. Have you ever questioned the fact, why is that the assailant is always an "unidentified black male?" and why did many prominent African-Americans(Shakur uses the term New-Afrikaans in this book, in the place of African-American) from Malcom-X and Muhammad Ali embrace Islam? All the answers are hidden in this book, it might not be obvious but it is there, 'cause you are going to live the life of a man who had gone to the edge and made it out alive from the jungles of South Central. There are no better seats for the show other than the one Kody himself has, you got the second best - the book.

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In the middle, In a muddle 

I am reading too many books and watching too many movies at the same time and haven't finished any of them. Currently I am reading Monster:The Biography of an LA Gang Member by Sanyika Shakur, Bel Canto by Ann Patchett, A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Marakami, Coming into the Country by John McPhee and ,The Culture of Make Believe by Derrick Jensen. Current movies, is a shorter list, Micheal Moore's Bowling for Columbine, Banger Sisters and Tigerland, all in queue, still waiting.

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Ice Fountain 

This is the from where I get my books and movies. Actually, this is the snow fountain in the front yard of Public Library here in town.

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We Die Alone 

What kind of people turns me on? Survivors. Not the participants of that high rated reality show (silly, I'd say. Tribes, clans..woo hoo hoo.....*ROTFL*.....all in the name of pasting your face in the living rooms of other mindless millions). The real survivors are those people who made it back to life, after everything went against them, who had the closest shaves with death that we could never ever imagine and yet came back to live life the way the wanted to, although with much less glory and credit than Jesus after his resurruction. These are real flesh and blood people like you and me, ordinary citizens of mundane everyday human drama, yet they came alive from situations where death was the only option. How did that happen?

If you want to know more, read some of the books that celebrate such journeys. I really dig these books, it started when I was fourteen, with Alive:The Story of Andes Survivors by Piers Paul Reed, which narrates the story of an Urugyan rugby team, whose plane crashes into the remote Andes and the survivors even had to resort to eat the dead bodies of their teammates to stay alive. Yesterday I finished reading We Die Alone by David Howarth which describes a WW2 escape story made by a battered and frost bitten Norwegian soldier, Jan Baalsrud, through the Lyngen Alps, across German patrolled villages and into Sweden, which was neutral at the time. Some parts of his escape seem too incredible to be true, which the author says no one would have believed but for the presence of witnesses, who themselves corroborated the story and aided in his escape.

Jan Baalsrud, was part of a 12 member undercover Norwegian expat militia, who after a long ardorous journey from England to Norway, were supposed to form a counter resistance group against the Nazis, by organizing the villagers in the area. As luck would have it, as soon as the convoy of 12 men alighted on the Norwegian coast, they are ambushed by the German army and all except Jan were caught or murdered. Thus begins one man's epic saga of survival, which includes more than a month entombed in coma inside a snow tomb, hardly bigger than himself and operating his frost bitten toes himself with more precision than an experienced surgeon. All through his journey Jan relied heavily on the help rendered by his countrymen, without which he'd have never made out of it alive. I haven't said anything about the story as yet, if you like this kind of stuff, I'd say go for it.David Howarth, the author is a veteran writer of WW2 tales of escape and endurance, so that means there is more stuff out there for me to devour.

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How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days 

Romantic comedy, as was expected. The hero, is the staple of the makers of this film genre in late ninties and nots, Mathew McConoughey and the heroine is the bubbly Kate Hudson. Not much of a story, then again there were no expectations in that department either. The screenplay was really horrible, actually some romantic comedies inspite of having very obvious plot lines used to have interesting screen plays. This one seems to have run out wise crack dialogues, had it been there it'd have made the movie a li'l more bearable than it really was. Kate Hudson is good for the part, cannot comment this about anyone else. Well then, romantic comedies are like this, right. I didn't like Sleepless in Seattle much either ;) .

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Joe Somebody 

I like Tim Allen movies except when he tries to dress up as Santa Claus. Joe Somebody tells the story of an 'almost'-invisible pharmaceutical company employee, played by Tim Allen, who is a recent divorcee, is passed up for promotion and is considered a nobody at the office. The aim of the movie is to make somebody out of this nobody. I am not going to say how the movie goes about in achieving this seemingly impossible goal. All I can say is the ending sucks. If this is supposed to be a chick flick, I don't understand the workings of chicks' brains, especially the ones in this movie.

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Owning Mahowny 

Owning Mahowny is a gentle movie about a Toronto bank manager who is a gambling addict. Like all addictions this one too can make or break a man, the man in question, the bank manager is played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. There is not any adrenaline pumping drama, considering the fact that most of the scenes take place in Atlantic City and Las Vegas in addition to Toronto. It is a character study of an ordinary man, with access to the large sums of money - although illegaly and who channels it to meet his unsatiable addiction with black jack, craps and the such. The pluspoint of the movie is that it is based on real life events, which negatively implies not many high speed car chases and tecnically perfect cons.

Hoffman is brilliant as Mahowny, Minnie Driver in a blonde wig plays his girlfriend - nothing much for her to do in that part. Its fun to know how the casino bosses deal with high rollers such as Hoffman and how much hand luck really has in the whole business of gambling. A comparitvely good movie with no extra gloss.

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Something's Gotta Give 

Jack and Diane, no, not the Mellencamp song, this is Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton in Nancy Meyer's new movie Something's Gotta Give. Nancy Meyer's What Women Want was a better crowd puller than this, her latest offering. Although it is a romantic comedy, it is not everyman's cup of tea, thats what I felt while watching the movie.

We did laugh real hard in some parts and there ofcourse was the cool hunk Keanu Reeves and the beautiful Amanda Peet. I like Diane Keaton, so whatever comments I have about her acting will be positive unless she had deliberately trashed the film, which is not the case here. Jack Nicholson, what can one say?!!?? I don't usually like the characters he portrays, but he as always, has proved once again he's a master actor. Frances Macdormand plays a small side role as Keaton's sister, wonder why an actress as talented as she should do such no-role roles?

Overall not a bad movie, though there seems to be more people in my opposite camp than I have on my side. Well....thats my side of the story, you have the right to have yours.

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Zero Kelvin 

The first Stellan Skaarsgard movie I saw was Insomnia, the original 1997 Norwegian film at a film festival in Trivandrum a few years back. Needless to say the the Norwegian Insomnia was better than the Hollywood version, which was not that all that bad either considering it came from Hollywood. Zero Kelvin is two years older than Insomnia and tells the story of three Norwegian trappers stationed in the East of Greenland.

Gard Eisvold is a youngman in twenties Norway, a budding poet, who accepts a trapping job in the desolate and icy coast of Eastern Greenland. Skaarsgard plays the role of an experienced but foul mouthed trapper, with whom Eisvold ends up staying. The film capture the loneliness and the hardships men encounter in that icy wasteland, which reflect on their behaviour and lives. Skaarsgard is unrecognizable, he is the arrogant, unhygenic lumbering form of a man, for whom contact with other human beings is as difficult as it is for a Big Foot or Yeti. The film could be considered as an excellent study of human nature in the very hostile of climates.

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Govinda 

How come that the only Hindi movies I enjoy nowadays are Govinda's? Saw Govinda-Rani Mukherjee starrer Chalo Ishq Ladaye, a mindless comedy, no harm in that if you don't expect much. Afterall what do you expect from a Govinda movie other than being a total timepass.

I read some bad reviews about this film, what I don't understand is what were these reviewers looking for? Were they expecting a Shyam Benegal or Satyajit Ray movie? Come on, people, if you are looking for stellar performances and serious cinema, you are watching the wrong movie. The very name Govinda ensures that you can turn off your brain cells for the next two and half hours, sit back, relax and have some silly laughs while you are at it. This movie guarentees that and some of the dialogues (especially Gulshan Grover's in the first half) are really funny. Then there is the indomitable Grand Mama of Indian cinema, Zohra Sehgal as Govinda's daadi (grand mom), who's funny and convincing as the tight fisted autocratic daadi.

There was a time when I considered Govinda movies as total trash. Had Nostradamus told me that I'd be enjoying them sometime in the future (not that Nostradamus would waste himself on predictions like these...just to explain the gravity of the situation), I'd have asked him to pursue some other trade. Greeks were better oracles anyway, not Italians. Coming back to Chalo Ishq Ladaye, the other actors are ok, Rani is not bad, neither is Gulshan Grover and Kader Khan, Johnny Lever's role and his dialogues don't go well with the rest of the film, might have added him for that 'extra dash of comedy', only to spoil the broth. Not much of a story, nothing at all if you have already seen Hitchcock's 'Strangers On A Train', which I saw a couple of months back. All in all, a pure Govinda film, don't try to think and review the film, watch it and let go.

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Late Marriage 

Israelis are certainly noisier than Americans but they are a lot less noisier than Punjabis or Greeks, thats what this Israeli movie, Late Marriage taught me. On the DVD cover I read the film being compared to My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Monsoon Wedding. Although all three deal with the same subject of marriage and the family's need for the boy or the girl to find someone who'll fit in well with them, the Israeli movie lacks the tempo and exuberance of the Greek wedding or the Indian wedding.

Its about a 31 year old bachelor, named Zaza, who is pursuing his doctorate in humanities at Tel Aviv University and his family's plans on getting him settled with a nice girl of their choice. Meanwhile Zaza seems to have other ideas and is pursuing an affair with a divorcee who is elder to him by three years and also has a kid. Now you get the picture....the movie is about the whole extended family of Zaza plotting to trap him in an arranged marriage and what happens in the end is suspense, you better go watch the movie. It is different from the usual Hollywood mish-mash, but then that is expected of anything thats filmed outside Hollywood, right? Other than that, I don't think its much of a ground breaker or anything, its different, thats that.

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The IMax Effect of North American Landscape 

There is a picture of rural America (by America I mean the North American continent, I am yet to travel to the Southern part of this continent) in my mind....the horizon kissing expanse of yellow fields with a red barn thrown in, a couple of horses grazing on the green patch by the road, an old Chevy pickup, rattling down the dust road leading away from the house hidden behind the towering oaks, it's been a long time since I saw that scene in real life. While we were in San Ramon, we used to drive the back roads into real California country, that is the piece of Californian land which had not yet fallen into the hands of greedy real estate companies looking for another piece of 'prime land' for development.

For a first time visitor, the beauty of American landscape is like seeing a movie at an IMAX movie theater after having watched 35mm movies all your life. Especially for a person like me, coming from Indian subcontinent where the scale of the landscape is mostly intimate, like the narrow twisting green lagoon corridors of Kerala or the mughal gardens of Kashmir and Himachal which miniaturize paradise in a few precious terraced acres, of course I am enthralled by those landscapes too. They epitomize another kind of beauty, of home. I am surprised 'cause Europe is s'posed to be beautiful, not America. America is the place where the modern has gone berserk, atleast that was what I thought.

American geography was a revelation of sorts in a big way, literally, the scale here is monumental. Right now, sitting with my laptop at my dining table, I can see the snow covered road leading away from our balcony, cutting across an urban corridor lined on each side with drooping conifers as if its aiming straight at the mountains pasted like a tableau near the horizon and here I am, sitting in the middle of downtown Anchorage.

We used to go for long bike rides through the farm country which lay behind the urban facade of San Francisco's East Bay, which is punctuated by rolling hills and valleys, with farms on the hills dotted with hundreds of black n white cows and an occasional park or preserve. It was the vastness of the land that enchanted me, the idea that owning a hundred acre farm does not exactly make you the biggest farmer around, chances are that you'd be the smallest one. Like the 'grande' helpings you get at restaurants across the country, everything about this nation adheres to the slogan 'think big' and I have a suspicion that it was Nature who started it that way. With its wide-screen version of the world, the physical scenery of United States is something the glossy coffee table books cannot give full justice to.

In Alaska, the American landscape is presented in the grandest of all grand scales. Forget about you the fact you are in United States, it is 'specially easier if you can comfortably turn a blind eye to the the well maintained highway which led you till this last frontier. My friends who pride themselves to be real Alaskans warn me not to consider any place accessible by road as a part of real Alaska. The great wilderness of Alaska they say, lies beyond the reach of the ordinary motorist like you and me. For me who has just started learning the Alaskan primer, even the places I can access on four wheels leave me speechless, mountains that start straight off from sea, the white vastness of the endless tundra in the winter, pristine forests bursting off in all colors imaginable during the spring, golden hues of the fall, every season it is like being in a new place, and I'd have hardly ventured out of my own backyard.

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A White Christmas 

It has been ages since I posted anything other than a book or a film review. But with more than 36 inches (3 feet) of snow in the last 3-4 days and still showing no signs of stopping I guess its time I wrote something about the Alaskan snow. This year we are sure gonna have a white Christmas. The picture here (if you can see anything in it) is taken from my balcony looking out to the driveway approaching the apartment, which used to be forty feet wide ;-), now with all the snow pushed on to the sides and invisible cars which are buried under snow (which the owners have not cared to check upon since the last three days), the road is hardly 20 ft wide.The snow pile seen on the bottom right corner of the photo, is the snow that has piled up on our balcony railing in the last 3 days. Only last week did I clean the whole balcony off snow, not because my cleaning instincts were awakened, but I had this sudden creative urge to build a snowman. It isn't worth mentioning that half an hour of my snowman building efforts ended when all I could come up was a mound of knee high snow, which did not remotely resemble any snowman I had ever seen. That being said, it doesn't mean that such small setbacks make me not like the snow, I love snow. Coming from a place which sits almost right smack on the equator, snow used to be a distant dream while growing up. It took twenty one years of my life to see and feel the wonder of snow for the first time, in a small town in the Himalayan foothills. Alaska is a long way off from Himalayas, but the white wonderland of enchantment is the same wherever you go.

I had people tell me how they hated the long and snowy Alaskan nights of December and January. Maybe because they have been here all their lives and I guess that kind of familiarity might breed contempt. For a newcomer like me, five months of winter is like living in a totally new place. Gone are the days of hiking, camping, fishing and other summer fun things, and in comes the days of skiing. With three world class ski resorts right here in town, what else could you ask for but ski all your free time away. Tomorrow you might not find the time or might not be in the right place, who knows. Coming to think of it, we are usually the only skiers on the slopes these days, seems like alpine skiing has given way to snow boarding in a big way, everywhere you see youngsters tagging along snowboards in psychedelic colors.

But then winter is not all fun either. You need to change your summer tires to winter tires, the ones with studs (tires fitted with spikes/studs for use in winter). Its comparitively better if you have a four wheel drive vehicle instead of a two wheel drive, that explains the overpopulation of trucks and SUVs on Alaskan roads and also how a puny person like me ended up driving a truck. On an ordinary day with moderate snow shower, there are atleast three to four dozen distress calls from drivers sliding off the roads, getting trapped in snow or getting into minor accidents, all because of snow. Well...we try to drive safe, but then you can never say. We are glad our homes are heated, so its always the warm tropics inside, even if its sub zero temperatures outside (currently it is -15 deg celsius outside), but don't be too cosy either, thats what a recent accident taught us. Earlier this month five members of a family died in their home, right here in town, by carbon monoxide poisoning, all because of a defective / blocked vent. After that incident Costco ran out of CO monitoring systems, as people started buying them like crazy. Now it seems like snow blowers are also out of stock, as people have given up snow showelling since its getting them nowhere with this huge pile up of snow around and have turned to snow blowers.

For those who are scared of cold and snow, let me tell you something. Alaskan winter is not the worst winter I have ever experienced in my life, that coveted title goes to a winter, a couple of years back in New Delhi. Zero degree celsius, brick and cement houses (can't imagine the state of people who live in slums in this kind of climate), no central heating (I didn't even have one of those handy portable heaters), all I had was a woollen blanket in a house that was chilled to the core of its foundation. Here, in climate controlled environs, unless you are a real outdoor enthusiast, all that you can feel and see of the changing seasons is thru' your window - either your living room window or your car's. All the rest could be summed up as minor inconveniences - like tredging 20 feet thru' snow to reach the department store entrance from your car or getting some kind of pollen allergy when flowers start bloomin' in spring, the rest is all the same, unless you go out and live every season differently.

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The Five People You Meet in Heaven 

A beautiful story. I read it in one go, could be an excellent book to take on those intercontinental flights or one of those long non-stop journeys. This book is written by Mitch Albom, who is better known for his earlier novel, Tuesdays with Morrey, which has been made into a film. I haven't read Tuesdays with Morrey, but Five People... is definitely a keeper.

It explores a new concept of heaven (or afterlife?), according to which, the protagonist of the novel, Eddie - ordinary of all ordinary mortals, meets five people in the so-called Heaven. More than a place this Heaven is a state of being, state of consciousness and everyone will meet their five chosen people in heaven. The five people Eddie meets in heaven are varied as a group can be, some are total strangers, some are acquaintances and one is his wife.

If there is a book that can make you cry, not in desperate sorrow, but in quiet contemplation, this is it. For all those, like me, who have not yet been 'saved' enough to forget that we are just a mass of organic compounds, bound to decay, insignificant as the withering plant in your balcony which you have forgotten to water, Five People You Meet in Heaven is salvation, atleast during the hours you are reading it.

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Bicyle Thief, The 

Vittorio De Sica's acclaimed masterpeice , The Bicycle Thief brought back memories of old Satyajit Ray films, black and white films of another era which were touted a class apart. Ofcourse, they were, they reminded us of a not so colorful world we inhabit daily, but nonetheless poignant and sanguine. Bicycle thief is set in post war Italy where people are struggling to make ends meet, not at all confirming to the glorious picture of Europe that people from developing countries might have of it.

The hero of the film lands a job, after a long wait, whose requirement is that he should have bicyle, which he procures after repaying the loan he has taken on the bicycle. As luck would have it on the first day of the job itself the bicycle gets stolen and the movie follows his search for the bicycle and its thief on the very next day thru' the streets of the city, with his young son.

The young boy who follows his father in his search has been portrayed as a silent observer and witness of all the events, at once the viewer is the man and the boy. Lamberto Maggiorani, who plays the main character of the man who loses his bicycle is brilliant inspite of being a non actor. The child actor Enzo Staiola was casted right from the streets to play the character of the little boy, it is as if he is the character. The movie won the best foreign film Oscar in 1949. By some coincidence or similarity this film reminds me a lot of Bimal Roy's Do Bhiga Zameen.

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Salaam Bombay 

Fifteen years, thats a long time to abstain from watching a great movie from your own country, made by one of the greatest directors, that too a woman, why did I do this unpardonable crime? I saw a bit of it once, at one of my friend's houses in Ahmedabad, five years back, didn't give it more than a fleeting glance since we had a seminar presentation the next day. Yesterday I got the opportunity again, what more could I say, salaam Bombay! salaam Mira Nair! for giving us this gem of a movie, salaam to all the people who worked behind and in this film, one of the best movies, in any language I have ever watched.

Salaam Bombay is one of the few movies, that unleashed a mass movement in India, a movement for the betterment of lives of street children, in Bomaby. You can catch that at Salaamstreetkids.org The other similar movie I can remember is Roland Joffe's City of Joy, which led to the creation of City of Joy trust by Dominique Lapierre for the underpriveleged in Calcutta. For a little more than two hours, you are made to realize how lucky you are, lounging in the sofa infront of the TV or munching pop corn at the movie hall, you will be glad you are not one of those street kids whose life epitomises the meaning of struggle every next second, yet they are happy, they are innocent and they are real. The director Mira Nair, selected real street kids for the roles, in addition to a few character actors like Raghuvir Yadav, Nana Patekar and Anita Kanwar. When one of the street kids in an interview done fifteen years later says that 99% of the movie is true to life in the streets of Mumbai, you will know this is as real as it gets. Salaam Bombay is one of the movies that will awaken that altruistic streak in everyone of us, the moment we are done with the movie, we are bundles of enthusiasm, we burst with goodness, we are faced with the blessed idea that we have to contribute something to the betterment of humanity. Well, if you feel that way, don't let that feeling die a natural death after a couple of hours, act on it, it is actually true when they say, 'you can make a difference'.

The DVD I saw included interviews with the main actors and technicians who worked in the film in 1988, a segment in the lines of "Where are they now?'. Shafiq Sayid, the protangonist has gone from a street kid to a national award winning child star to a nobody and to being an assisstant cameraman settled and leading a peaceful life with a wife and two kids in Bangalore. Another street kid (Kira in the movie) was adopted by Salaam Bombay's camera woman Sandy Sissel and is now Bernard Sissel, living in LA - talk about chances in a billion. Mira Nair, ofcourse as everyone know went on to become one of the acclaimed directors in world cinema. I have watched all the movies made by her, except the documentaries, but this one, her first one, I'd say, is by far the best.

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Qayamat 

Watched a mainstream Hindi movie after a considerable interval which made me realize I had been nurturing an impossible notion that commercial Hindi films were indeed getting better. I could not have been more wrong, considering the fact that Qayamat had a good run in most Indian cities.

The movie blatantly steals from a bunch of Hollywood movies, falls shamelessly short of each one of them . I had completely forgotten how Hindi movies jump into the song-dance routine at the batting of an eyelid, this movie has given me a whack on the head and jolted me into the harsher (or should I say sweeter syrupier mushier) realities of Bollywood entertainment. Lately I had seen a couple of low budget Bollywood flicks, yes.. they made a string of those sometime back with aspiring teen actors and to say the truth they were much better than this star studded action flick. Arbaaz Khan and Sanjay Kapoor are pathetic as villians, who told them to be villians all you needed was a wide mouthed villianous laugh?!?? The saving grace of the movie is Ajay Devgan who inspite of having found himself in the middle of a bad script and shoddy direction has proved that he is one of the best actors Bollywood has churned out in the recent past.

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Down With Love 

A romantic comedy set in the sixties, starring Rene Zellweger and Ewan Mcgregor. I like both of them, there is no serious stuff in here, no lessons learnt, although the movie does repeat once in a while that its underlying theme is the battle of the sexes, its a fun battle and McGregor has cool sixtyishname - Catcher Block !!!

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Amelie 

I saw Amelie sometime back, liked it, then forgot all about it. Its like a funny feel good Disney animation with a Made in France tag and real life characters. The style of narration is quite refreshing, so is the camera and lighting. The actress who played Amelie, Audrey Taotou lives being Amelie, you know the kind, even if you see her 50 years later on a street, you'll recognize her and you'll call her by name(Amelie, ofcourse), as if she has always been your next door neighbor. The film is red and green, very holidayish colors, and yeah, thinking about it - its a good movie to watch during the holidays.

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Barbershop 

A pure entertainer, for a change its from the African Amercian perspective. Ice Cube is the owner of the barbershop which is in the south side of Chicago and it could be called the neighborhood community center. The whole movie takes place in a day, from dawn to dusk, which starts off like any other day for the local barbershop. Fortunes fluctuate, minds change, decisions are remade and finally everything turns out just perfect. Good timepass.

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