The best i’ve come across this year:
1. TV Show, UK- Skins
2. Song (+ lyrics ), Blue October – Hate Me
3.Movie, UK – Trainspotting
3. Movie, Indian – Dev D
5. Movie,Indian – Luck By Chance
6. Movie,USA – The Wrestler
6. Movie ( Series ), USA – Kill Bill
8. Movie ( Series ),USA – Star Wars
9. Movie ( Series ), USA – X-Men
10. TV Show, USA – Californication
Sometimes, there’s parts to your story, you want to keep to yourself, things you don’t want to face, but you have to eventually, when your friends had that bad day as well, but you’re still making it worse; but there are other parts; the beautiful ones, the innocent ones, that lighter side that you wish would come back, and suddenly one day, it does!!
Sometimes, all these parts, the good and the bad ones, you come across them all in a single day ( or more like 26 hours). I had that day yesterday..
I learned:
1.) Save the hurting for later
If you could keep your sanity when people were judgmental, a straight face; while on the inside, the arrogance was too much to take, and the T word has been played with too many times, be the brave guy.
2.)It can always get better
A single childhood joke, that small detail, the kiddy games, shared, between those friends from then, and voila, it does.
3.)The true friend
Talk, share, ask, laugh, listen,conspire, inspire and speak a lots…your punching bag!
4.)Superlative
You’re not the only one who had this day, or at least had significant action in theirs, there’s a place to stop, turn, and take another road, because this road, there’s too many crashes along it, and the hurting dwells again..
The Words:
Sometimes its fun being with the difficult guy…otherwise u’re a jerk most’ve the time! becomes such a piss-off..
The Song:
I have to block out thoughts of you so I don’t lose my head
They crawl in like a cockroach leaving babies in my bed
Dropping little reels of tape to remind me that I’m alone
Playing movies in my head that make a porno feel like home
There’s a burning in my pride, a nervous bleeding in my brain
An ounce of peace is all I want for you. Will you never call again?
And will you never say that you love me just to put it in my face?
And will you never try to reach me? It is I that wanted spaceHate me today
Hate me tomorrow
Hate me so you can finally see what’s good for youI’m sober now for 3 whole months it’s one accomplishment that you helped me with
The one thing that always tore us apart is the one thing I won’t touch again
In a sick way I want to thank you for holding my head up late at night
While I was busy waging wars on myself, you were trying to stop the fight
You never doubted my warped opinions on things like suicidal hate
You made me compliment myself when it was way too hard to take
So I’ll drive so fucking far away that I never cross your mind
And do whatever it takes in your heart to leave me behindHate me today
Hate me tomorrow
Hate me for all the things I didn’t do for youHate me in ways
Yeah ways hard to swallow
Hate me so you can finally see what’s good for youAnd with a sad heart I say bye to you and wave
Kicking shadows on the street for every mistake that I had made
And like a baby boy I never was a man
Until I saw your blue eyes crying and I held your face in my hand
And then I fell down yelling “make it go away!”
Just make a smile come back and shine just like it used to be
And then she whispered “How can you do this to me?”Hate me today
Hate me tomorrow
Hate me for all the things I didn’t do for youHate me in ways
Yeah ways hard to swallow
Hate me so you can finally see what’s good for you
The Reply:
.<F.<U><R>B>.
The End.
Apologies once again for passing up on the blog for more than 3 months. Thanks to this absence, I’ve now officially become a dormant blogger according to some of the worlds most read blogs. Please read them blooooogs, they’re scribbled upon often enough with the regular supposedly inspirational/self-conscious updates, love their numbers, need your support.
Anyways, its not that i haven’t wanted to write all this time, there has been a lot to write on, things the world has seen, movies that i’ve seen, places I’ve been to, faces I’ve met, and all along I’ve wanted to share the thoughts. Again, I don’t even have excuses to fall back on, its not that I’ve been especially busy, nor have I been isolated from the www.
I can remember many instances when i reached the wordpress homepage, logged in, even worked on the plentiful spam, kept opening all the blogs i read for strictly inspirational purposes, n then eventually closed the browser, promising myself of the effort another time.
Contemplation could be something I could go on ranting about here, but naah, that’d make it boring though. I’m usually casual about things, and dont often give a fuck to most things that happen around me, so hell I if didn’t get the steroids for blog writing, does it really matter.
The fact is blogging has become too much’ve a formality to go back to, and I’m really too lazy to be dressed in my best brain Armanis every now n then to raise the post toast.
Anyhows, this is whats bin happening off late:
1. Lots’ve trance, used to mock Shanky for his trance habits once, now i can’t get the dope out’ve my system.
2.Irritating people’s still on, though the bar’s been raised, I’m now the proud winner of the Best Brag title.
3.Did not, could not go back home this Holi, too bad.
4.Please find me the anti-dope for DOTA, do I really want it?
5.Plan to get up late tomorrow, or rather don’t plan to get up early tomorrow.
PS: 5 ways to screw up a perfect day:
->Attend double RC Jha lectures.
->Fight everyone, esp. those u’re not talking to in person (i.e on calls, the net , etc.)
->Applicable to Tuesdays n Thursdays: Have breakfast in the hostel.
->See your unlucky charm sometime during the day ( though some of my friends have contagious effects, with their grims giving hell to everyone around them as well).
->There’s a fifth way, I never have a perfect day.
( Do I have to fill in the excerpt given below as well? )
This was a very interesting review to Slumdog that i found here. I feel this is exactly how i’d describe my Slumdog experience….
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I did not like “Slumdog Millionaire”. Or perhaps I should say I was not at all impressed. Maybe it was all the hype, the Oscar buzz and the “It is soooo awesome” first-person accounts I have heard over the last few weeks that led me to go into the theater with unrealistic expectations. Perhaps.
First let us get the standard attacks on reviews one does not like out of the way.
Yes yes I am being contrarian to get attention.
Yes yes I am too idiotic to understand a truly great movie.
Yes yes I suffer from a third-world siege mentality where I am offended by anything that does not show my country in a purely positive light.
If we can now move beyond these, then let us proceed.
And yes. If you have not seen the movie, then perhaps you are better off not going below the fold (though I try my best not to give away the ending) if you want to “experience” without any pre-knowledge this supposed masterpiece.
There is a difference between clever film-making and great film-making. Make no mistake, Danny Boyle is immensely clever. “Slumdog Millionaire” is made as an out-and-out “crowd-pleaser” through proper audience-targetting which is done in the same careful way the Chopras target the lovey-dovey high school/college crowd and the Anil Sharmas target the uber-patriots.
This crowd-pleasing is done through punching together as many stereotypes that Westerners have about India as is humanly possible. People live in garbage heaps. A character jumps into a huge heap of human excreta and without batting an eyelid comes running out covered in brown slime, as if its the most natural thing in India, to get an autograph of a star. The hero, a Muslim, sees his family slaughtered by Hindu rioters and sees along with it a rioting kid (presumably) dressed as Lord Rama, in blue paint and with a bow and arrow in hand, standing as a sentinel of doom, an image whose indelibility in the character’s mind becomes a principal plot point.
A character is booked on the flimsiest of charges and then he is beaten black and blue in a police station and given volts of electricity.
What else? Let’s see.
Child prostitution. Check.
Forced begging. Check.
Blindings of innocent children. Check.
Rape. Check.
Human filth. Bahoot hain sahab.
Call centers. Oh yes most certainly.
Destiny. Of course.
But wait. Do Hindu saffron-clothed Ram Senas not run havoc through Muslim slums? Do street kids not get taken in by beggar gangs and maimed? Doesnt rape happen in India? Are those slums specially constructed sets? Why do you, third world denizen, get so defensive about your own country? Chill.
Well yes these things do happen in India. However the problem is when you show every hellish thing possible all happening to the same person. Then it stretches reason and believability and just looks like you are packing in every negative thing that Westerners perceive about India for the sake of “crowd pleasing”. Because audiences and jury members “feel good” when their pre-conceived notions are confirmed. On the flip side, nothing disquiets a viewer as much as when his/her prejudices are challenged. So Boyle does the safe thing.
Let’s say I made a movie about the US where an African-American boy born in the hood, has his mother sell him to a pedophile pop icon, after which he gets molested by a priest from his church, following which he gets tied up to the back of a truck and dragged on the road by KKK clansmen. Then he is arrested and sodomized by a policeman with a rod, after which he is attacked by a gang of illegal immigrants, and then uses these life experiences to win “Beauty and Geek”.
Even though each of these incidents have actually happened in the United States of America, I would be accused of spinning a fantastic yarn that has no grounding in reality, that has no connection to the “American experience” and my motivations would be questioned, no matter how cinematically spectacular I made my movie. At the very least, I wouldn’t be on 94% on Tomatometer and a strong Oscar favorite.
But then you say—Boyle is constructing a fairytale, a dash of Indian exotica, a love story. Surely he can take liberties. Make the darkness darker in order to brighten the halo around the hero and heroine.
Ok I get it. That’s why the first shot of Taj Mahal is through filth, when any other shot would have done. That’s why the host of Millionaire is shown heartlessly mocking the fact that the contestant is a humble “chaiwala” as the audience laughs with him in a way that reminded me of Amrish Puri, rolling his eyes and saying “Tu to gandhi naali ka keeddaaaa hainnnn”. Even though this kind of class-based running down will never ever happen on “Millionaire” if for nothing else than political correctness , lets accept it happens just to heighten the drama.
Which brings us to the main weakness of “Slumdog Millionaire”. There are way too many things you have to “accept” in order to enjoy this supposed “glorious celebration of exotica” , too many plot contrivances, too many loopholes you can drive a truck through that you have to turn a blind eye too.
Suspension of disbelief is one thing, after all movies are not logic proofs. But “Slumdog” sometimes gets so focused on the “scents” (excreta) and “sounds” (pain) of India that it does not bother to even try to make some of the fantastic coincidences look even moderately plausible.
But then again, as you said, it is a fairytale. Which means it has infinite license for taking liberties.
The thing is that the same people who are going ga-ga over “Slumdog” saying “Areee yaar, dont over-analyze. Dont see it from a realist perspective. Just enjoy the ride” will go and say “What! She cannot recognize Shahrukh Khan just because he doesn’t have his moustache” and ” Wait. Rahul Roy sings Jaane Jigar Jaane Man and just finds Anu Agarwal in the city of Mumbai by doing that ” and “Gimme a break. Sunny Deol can decimate a full Pakistani armored division with his bare hands and screams. What will these people think of next”.
The reason for that simple. Hindi movies are, by nature, downmarket and silly. English movies made by people like Boyle, even when they adopt all the conventions of the masala film, are not. Why? Because they have been validated by the “experts” as “life-affirming”, “glorious”, “celebration of the power of dreams”. So “Slumdog Millionaire” with its horribly cliched and predictable love story is a “monumental tribute to the power of love”. While Kuch Kuch Hota Hain with its equally cliched and predictable love story is “oooh sooooo bakwaas”.
Even with all the stereotypes and all the plot contrivances, I would have still enjoyed “Slumdog Millionaire” if it had managed to, at any time, transcend its “masala” origins to become something greater, as Oscar winners ought to. As the “Dark Knight” transcended its comic book origins to become a fascinating study of true evil. As “City of God” goes beyond the depiction of poverty in Brazilian slums (which is never its primary morbid fascination) to become an epic about the cycle of extreme violence.
In this respect, Slumdog is never greater than the sum of its parts. The production quality is top notch but then again even Ramgopal Verma’s turkeys are technically very accomplished. There is not much scope for acting. However Anil Kapoor, who is slowly coming close to legally becoming a werewolf with his ear ornament makes his mark everytime he unleashes his fake American accent, though you keep expecting him to say “jhakaaassss”.
If there is anything unique about Slumdog is its use of the millionaire game show device to further its plot (even though the links between the plot and the questions are tenuous and sometimes extremely artificial), which I believe is one of the primary reason why people get caught up in the movie. The same reason they get caught up in reality shows like “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” and get up and cheer when a total stranger gets a million bucks. However once one goes beyond that device, there really is nothing exceptionally unique to Slumdog, nothing that warrants all the hype and hoopla.
A big disappointment.
Its been troubled times lately. The world all of a sudden seems a much more gloomier place than it was an year ago. And NO its not about the dementors ( i guess ). “Its chaos, and right now its the rule”
We’ve been seeing the physical terror striking every now and then. New militant groups spring out of extremist ideologies each day, they kill innocents, and innocents for whose cause they supposedly fight keep getting branded as miscreants. Multiple blasts in various cities across Asia have suddenly hindered the progressive peace and prosperity drives that resulted in significant financial improvements in the region. Political leaders keep playing the blame game, and well-wishers of the common are numbered. “People are dying out there, what’d you do? “
Money changes hands, money disappears, and keeps re-appearing, but money lives on- So where’s all the money gone now? Global Credit Crunch, Inflation, Rising Interest Rates, Taxes, Crude Prices; frankly i heard about most of them, this past quarter. Its not that money was easy to handle before, but its become a lot more difficult to understand now. People lose jobs each day, they kill themselves for their situation, its not because they don’t have the money now, its because they have seen it before, they’ve been on the highs, and now can’t live on the lows.
What we probably do not see very easily, or still pretend to be apathetic towards, is our very co-existence with the earth. I call it co-existence now because it seems we’ve come to a point, when either humans manage to exist somehow, or the earth end our existence naturally, through one of its ‘disasters’. As an eg. we keep celebrating the usual pleasures of Formula-1 racing ( the author included ), even though we all know what its worth.
What we’re witnessing are times when the water slowly rises above our necks, you can still breathe, but inside your head you know you’re not seeing a way out of this; so you re-assure everyone around you that every thing’s gonna be okay, even though you barely speak through all the choking; in turn you believe someone’s giving you hope, when that someone is you, yourself, the drowning man.
So isn’t it like one of the many days of terror that Gotham witnesses, isn’t there a Joker somewhere around who keeps laughing on our faces, and asks us
Why so serious?
Graffiti