Tare Zameen Par Review

Cast and Crew
Official Website: Tare Zameen Par
Duration: 2:40 hrs (approx.)
Genre: Social, Kids, Family
Director: Aamir Khan
Story: Amole Gupte
Lead Actors: Aamir Khan, Darsheel Safary
Supporting Cast: Sachet Engineer, Tanay Cheda, Tisca Chopra, Vipin Sharma
Music Director: Ehsaan Noorani, Loy Mendonca, Shankar Mahadevan
Lyrics: Prasoon Joshi

Plot Summary

Ishaan Awasthi (Darsheel Safary) is a dyslexic, but no one around him knows that. Ram Nikhumb (Aamir Khan) puts his faith in Ishaan and helps him work on his weaknesses and enhance his strengths.

Review

How can anyone not love a movie about children crafted with utmost compassion - children with special needs at that? But, is that the only reason I liked Tare Zameen Par? Absolutely no. What I know for certain is that a strong single-line story is narrated in a extremely charming manner. It is truly uplifting when spirit wins and yet, it is not all about the spirit of winning.

Tare Zameer Par is about a child who suffers because no one around him conceded that he is a slow learner. The beauty of the narration is that the message applies to all children - learning disability or not. How can creativity not deserve a place in academics? It also points a very subtle finger at how we build conformation in our system right at the roots.

The pace of the first half gives you time to think of normal children who are just not academically inclined. The resolution in the second half, however, comes by too quickly compared to the trauma shown earlier. But, I guess, if the point is to show that difficulties can be overcome, you don’t necessarily want to show how difficult it is to overcome them.

About 45 minutes post-interval, Darsheel Safary (Ishaan) said a line which made me realize that he hadn’t said a line in the last hour or so. There I was feeling sorry for Ishaan, feeling like yelling at someone to give him a big hug while I fought this lump in my throat that had been there for the longest time. All this based solely on Darsheel’s expressions and body language!

Kudos to the director for taking this decision and many such with brilliant confidence. And, finally we have a dialogue writer who knows when not to give the actors a helping hand. There are a couple of verbose, preachy scenes. But, they made the point because they were well written.

Aamir Khan’s entry into the movie seemed over-the-top and forced, mainly because it was in absolute contrast with the tone of the movie thus far. But after a little while you realize that you can’t distinguish between the actor/director Aamir Khan and his character Nikumbh. They are both fighting the same cause. Passionately. The other characters serve their purpose as caricatures - stereotypical father, loving mother, understanding sibling, ruthless teacher, and jeering peers.

No matter who or what the focus of the camera is, the love it feels towards its subjects shows in each frame. And, in turn, you fall in love with what you see on screen. Compositions, lighting, angles, colors all work successfully together to engross you and very often to enchant you. The lingering camera might have added a good 10-15 minutes to the run-time. But you will be hard-pressed to point out exact scenes which the movie could have done without. Everything is building character or atmosphere or both.

The songs too contribute to the narrative. The lyrics are sheer poetry. I know, that’s what they are supposed to be, but can’t remember the last time lyrics brought me to tears. “mein kabhi batlaata nahi” kept me speechless (and we all know how difficult that is!). And rock-style guitar strumming to a kids’ song - that’s what I call creative.

Yes, that dash of seemingly inevitable melodrama exists. The side-characters transform for no apparent reason. The climax is exaggerated and is as unrealistic as it could get. However, the aim is to show not reality of life but reality of the condition that this child suffers from. Once you get that, you pardon the make-up a mother is wearing at 6 AM while doing her chores. And anyway, most of this is towards the end, by which time you are willing to forgive. Because, above all else, it makes you think.

When did we grow up? When along the way did we forget what it felt like to be yelled at, to be put down, to be ridiculed? And why did we choose the next generation for revenge? Will we recognize the child in us that is struggling to get out? Will the sensation that the lump in the throat created, stay after the credits roll?

What worked

* The gutter scene in the beginning, beautifully shot!
* Titles - adorable!
* The manner in which the street vendors were captured in the sequence where Ishaan is roaming on the streets.
* The shudder Darsheel gives when the car starts (at the hostel).
* The way Ishaan’s character has developed. You know he is the kind who would hate showing his tears in public and thus refrains from crying when he is hit on his knuckles.
* Portrayal of how color is sucked out of Ishaan, a child whose only true love is colors.
* The scenes in which Ishaan is shown gazing at the scenery - a breathtaking composition.


What didn’t

* How can a school which boasts of discipline allow a parent to interrupt class?
* The principal of the school did not look stern enough to be such a stickler for discipline.
* How come Ishaan became such a sudden favorite at school that he got a standing ovation?

Nitty-Gritty

This section lists things that I think are not important
to the overall impact of the movie. In most cases, it could be explained away by something like, “we noticed the glitch after the scene was shot and there were schedule/budget issues and thus we could not re-shoot it”. I like giving the makers the benefit of doubt, but I am amused nevertheless. Hopefully, they will tickle you too.

* Teachers announcing marks of 60 children in front of the whole class, as if she was taking a roll call. Where does that happen? Marks usually are kept secret. And even if marks are announced they are just of the highest and the lowest scorers.
* Ishaan wears a uniform that is two sizes bigger than what he needs. Again, superficial things purposefully used to exaggerate situation and evoke empathy.
* Where did Ishaan get money to buy the gola (ice-candy) and take a bus ride? He used his school bus to go home, why would a third grader have money?

Cursed

Innocence of day
Raped away by night,
No way to resist,
Powerless to fight,

Imprisoned within himself
His bloodlust rages,
Killing them
One by one.

He lurks in the shadows
Hunting his prey,
It must be done
Before the start of day,

Haunted by spirits
He ravages the lands,
With a vengence filled heart
And bloodstained hands.

Review: Live Flesh (1997)

Victor Plaza (Liberto Rabal), a prostitute’s son born in a Madrid bus -- and on the very day in 1970 that Franco cracked down on personal liberties in Spain -- gets in serious trouble as a young man, goes to prison, and emerges while still in his twenties, eager to claim his personal freedom in a newly energized country. Franco is dead, and the reborn Victor -- the hero of Pedro Almodóvar’s Live Flesh -- has a galvanizing effect on everyone he meets. A lover with dark eyes and a small goatee, Victor is neither evil nor violent, but he’s an inexperienced, hungry young man, and things go out of control when he’s around (Rabal has rough edges that his predecessor in such roles, the handsomer, more skilled but more predictable Antonio Banderas, did not have). Live Flesh, the best movie from Almodóvar since that Iberian screwball classic Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, turns into a happy joke about passion as destiny, eros as the dominating force in life. Apart from eros, of course, there isn’t much life in Almodóvar -- the world of work and family hardly exists. But this Spanish bad-boy writer-director does the comedy of sexual passion better than anyone else. The entire history of Spanish repression and guilt seems to gather inside the heads of his men and women; they are naturally explosive in ways that Americans, with their lesser sense of sin, their hygienic attitude toward sex, could never be.



The story, which has been freely adapted from a Ruth Rendell novel, teases symmetry into an Almodóvarian pretzel. Eager to become the world’s greatest lover, Victor sleeps with the wives of the two Madrid policemen who put him in jail -- first Clara (the great Angela Molina, of the tragic mask), who is much adored by her murderously obsessive husband, Sancho (Pepe Sancho), who loves a woman by trying to dominate her and, if necessary, kill her. Clara cheats on her husband in order to survive him, in both body and soul. Taking Victor in hand, she teaches him some of the more essential points of lovemaking, and under Clara’s tutelage, he becomes a saner and gentler fellow -- a better man, in every sense. You might say he is healed by sex. Live Flesh, which begins and ends on Christmas, is about salvation; Almodóvar is eros’s last true worshiper.



Bored with Clara, Victor pursues the exquisite Elena (Francesca Neri), the woman who lured him into trouble some years earlier. It was at Elena’s house that the 20-year-old Victor accidentally shot Sancho’s partner, a promising young police detective named David (Javier Bardem). After the shooting, Elena, the daughter of the Italian consul, a rich girl dabbling in drugs, was so guilty over her own role in the affair that she married David, who had taken a bullet in the spine and was confined to a wheelchair. He’s a dynamite wheelchair basketball player and a thoroughly virile man in every sense but the literal one. So the adulterous joining of Victor and Elena is charged with the many varieties of desire, guilt, and ambivalence. It’s a scene worth waiting for -- certainly the most sensual of Almodóvar’s heterosexual love scenes.



Almodóvar’s electric, brightly colored hyperbolic style has always teetered on the edge of camp and pornography. When he’s going well, he achieves a delirious freedom of tone; when not so well, he horses his way into silliness. In Live Flesh, Almodóvar has stabilized his manner somewhat. The movie is not as startling and fantastic as Law of Desire or Matador, but it doesn’t settle into commonplace realism either. For Almodóvar, sexual passion is part of the cruel joke of Spanish guilt and fatalism. Sex is a matter of life and death that drives people into absurd situations; Almodóvar’s most tragic scenes slide into farce (and vice-versa). These men and women seem not to possess “psychology” but only desire; that’s all the psychology Almodóvar needs. It’s a view of character that dissolves social reality. Would an elegant woman like Elena, the daughter of a foreign diplomat, marry a young policeman? Would she leave him for a young nobody? In this movie, such questions are beside the point. Almodóvar embraces the Mediterranean, or celebratory, view of sex, familiar from Boccaccio’s stories, in which eros is a democracy of matching bodies and temperaments. Society, money, status all shrink to nothing. Despite his erotic fixations, Pedro Almodóvar is the cinema’s last true innocent.

Review: Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1990)

Who hasn’t felt, when in the throes of passionate love, just a little unbalanced, maybe even not-so-slightly lunatic? And who hasn’t felt a little spiritually strangled, mentally manacled by the obsessive love of another? And which of us hasn’t done something dreadful from which we’ve spent significant psychic energy trying to escape in an aimless journey down the river of denial, perhaps eventually committing to a series of actions aimed at expatiating this perceived sin, all the while secretly convinced of a personal unworthiness of complete catharsis?

Hmmm… okay, maybe not. Still, hang with me for a while on this, okay?

I guess the reason that Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, Spanish director-farceur Pedro Almodovar’s dark sex farce, remains a constant source of delight throughout its 100 minutes, and in the years since its 1990 release is its consistently relevant, deliriously provocative and giddily perverse exploration of the off-kilter and cruel-to-be-kind world of obsessive love.

This movie’s focus is almost entirely on the disturbing relationship that develops between recently released mental patient Ricky (Antonio Banderas) and drug addict/one time porno star with “legit” thespian ambitions Marina (Victoria Abril). Indeed, a big part of the film’s appeal is the nature of Almodovar’s fearlessness; he tackles clichés, like those implicit in this Madonna-whore treatment of Marina, in order to turn them on their collective heads and force us to face our own comfortable preconceptions. Ricky, a slightly lunatic Lothario, has become obsessed with Marina, and decides that the best way to convince her to return his love is to kidnap her in her own home then tie her to her bed. “I’ll never love you, ever,” she quite plausibly asserts. “We’ll see,” retorts Ricky.

And man, do we ever. See, that is. The “evolution” of their relationship, which challenges the audience’s comfortable middle-class comfort zones with regard to love and sexuality, is as visually exciting as it is intellectually and emotionally brave. The film is explicit, not just in its sex scenes, but its emotional honesty, as we struggle to understand these fragile, remarkable characters caught in an extraordinary love story, whose bonds of love are the ties that bind. Central to this film’s success is not only Almodovar’s uncompromising adherence to this tightrope vision, where he treads delicately between moments of giddy farce and then challenges us with dark scenes that threaten emotional and intellectual revulsion, but also a pair of no-holds-barred bravura performances in the lead roles. The charismatic Banderas, whose Ricky is the definition of dangerous and alluring Latino sexuality, and the pouty and sensuous Abril, whose Marina is both alluring and dangerous, deliver performances that are almost unsettlingly unselfconscious.

Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! is a film that won’t sit easily with a lot of people whose comfortable lives are built around Hallmark-like assumptions about the “niceness” of love. But for the rest of us, the film offers a delightfully twisted romp through the darkness visible in the recesses of our libido.

Review: Bonnie & Clyde (1968)

Freed from the production code that drove most of the old Warner Brothers gangster films of the 1930s and 40s, Arthur Penn gave Bonnie and Clyde a new kind of thrilling glee. When Warren Beatty, as Clyde Barrow, utters his famous line, "We rob banks," it's like a badge of fun, as if he were boasting of bungee jumping. The presence of a young, worrying Gene Wilder, an Oscar-winning Estelle Parsons and Michael J. Pollard add to the lightness. But Penn has a few tricks up his sleeve, and carefully layers the movie with little time bombs, such as the subtle references to Clyde's impotence and his violent reactions to Bonnie's attempts at lovemaking, all the way up to the celebrated, and still devastating, final violence. Faye Dunaway plays Bonnie with as much sensuality and nerve as the movie requires, perfectly matching her powerful co-star. Gene Hackman rounds out the cast in one of his earliest and greatest performances.

Bonnie and Clyde (1967) was one of the most famous, and groundbreaking, films in cinematic history. This was the retelling of the infamous Depression-era bank robbers who became folk heroes, containing classic performances from Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, as well as one of the most controversial endings ever in film.
The film certainly gives an air of romanticism, at least at first, with its portrayal of the two people. Bonnie is persuaded by both Clyde`s charm and his threatening aura. She has the sort of personality which easily falls for Clyde`s comment that she is the best girl in the state, and in no time flat she is swept into the risky business of bank-robbing. Along the way, they pick up a young gas station attendant named Moss, and later, Clyde`s brother (Gene Hackman) and sister-in-law are part of the bunch. A combination of Bonnie and Clyde`s rebellious youth, and their numerous run-ins with the law ensure their notoriety in a time in which people were in need of something to free their minds of the miseries of poverty and hardship. Yet all good things must come to end, and they do here, as well, -- and most violently.

One major theme in the movie is the idea of celebrity. As Bonnie and Clyde make their way across America, everyone wants to be part of the story, to say that they saw (or in some cases were robbed by) Bonnie and Clyde, celebrity criminals. The newspapers in the country saw fit to fabricate the number of robberies committed, in order to sell more papers and to perpetuate the mystique. The movie makes the claim that these crimianals were not out to harm the common folk, and in fact there is one scene in a bank in which Clyde kindly tells an elderly customer that he is not out to take his money away. This anti-authoriatian attitude certainly didn`t harm the heroic image they had aqquried. I certainly did not excatly find these characters endearing. For me they seemed more like white trash than radical socialists; foolish kids more than heroes. But that tension between what they really are, and what people (those following their story, the criminal gang itself, and even the film`s audience) want them to be is strong stuff, especially as it soon becomes clear it will not be a happy ending.

The actual relationship of Bonnie and Clyde is also interesting. Warren Beatty, in playing this character, has a little joke on himself and his notorious womanizing image, when Clyde tells Bonnie clumsily that "I ain`t no loverboy." While this may seem to be modesty on his part, it is later clear there is more to it. Clyde suffers from impotence, as all his energies are focussed on crime. Bonnie, on the other hand, is the sexual aggressor, equally comfortable in her own body, and in handling a gun. (The parallels between sex and violence are fairly clear.) Faye Dunaway successfully plays the character for her toughness, and, later on, for her fear that her fantastical lifestyle will start crumbling down on her.

The infamous ending is no doubt known to many, in a bloody, utterly final shootout which broke taboos for both violence and grim endings. Despite the more bloodly (and senseless) violence in current films, those situations could never match up to the ending of this film, as it is so final, so cold, so wrenching, that it will stick to you for at least a few minites. Basically, a number of thoughts should come to your head -- Do they deserve punishment? Should the audience have been rooting for these characters?

Review: Pulp Fiction (1994)

Pulp Fiction is the volcanic eruption of Quentin Tarantino's mind. What erupts is so original, so funny, obscene, violent, outrageous and clever that the film will be remembered as one that added a new dimension to the already zany world of movie making. That's it for the adjectives. The movie is to be seen, not described. It's devilishly hard to capture an explosion.

The new dimension is the mind of a 31-year-old ex-video clerk from southern California. The image is inescapable: Tarantino watching hundreds of hours of videotape, absorbing the B-movie subculture until he had to write about it. Does this mean that television, the country's demondrug of choice, may have an unexpected side-effect? Have all those hours in front of the box produced in Generation-X the ability to catch the world in fast-frame images so evocative and confusing and entertaining that we will have to learn the new language of image?

Can a movie that puts a hammer, baseball bat, chain saw and sword in the hands of thugs be funny? You bet it can, when the background is a running stream of hilarity. It's full of wacky juxtapositions: blood and civility, violence and compassion.

The movie is a twisted cat's cradle of three intersecting stories set in the underbelly of contemporary Los Angeles and inspired by the pulp fiction magazines that were newsstand staples in the 1930s, the kind printed on paper so cheap you could use it to soak up spilled milk.

Amanda Plummer's Honey Bunny and Tim Roth's Pumpkin are discussing career options in a coffee shop. Vincent (John Travolta) and Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) are carrying out orders from their boss, Marsellus (Ving Rhames), who tells Vincent to baby-sit his wife Mia (Uma Thurman) while he's away. Butch (Bruce Willis) has been ordered by Marcellus to take a dive in a fight. Instead, he takes the money and runs. With a dead body in a blood-soaked car, Jules and Vincent turn to "The Wolf" (Harvey Keitel). Those are the bare bones of the thing.

Now, add a superb rhythmic score, vivid cartoon colors, a wealth of underworld detail and a cast of good actors who have somehow stepped perfectly into Tarantino's head. They run with his vision, but never too far. You will remember the barrage of electric images, Butch's moment of truth and Vincent's solution to his baby-sitting dilemma.

The actors all seem to understand they are interpreting ludicrous ideas from a wickedly original imagination. Carrying the film along at three levels beyond reality, they execute perfectly the images conjured up by an ex-video clerk who watched only so long before his mind spilled over. May we all be around for the next spill, and may Tarantino be lucky enough, always, to have such actors.

Teardrops Of Ice

I stare at my face in the mirror
Yet I cannot see the lies
Or the pain within my heart
Blinded by memories of the past
I gaze into the void of nothingness
Hidden within these deep brown eyes of mine
Staring back at me from it's reflection

My hatred is gone
All that is left is emptiness and sorrow
Now flowing through my veins, poisoning my mind
Teardrops of ice are blurring my reflection
Drowning it in silent greif

Lost behind the lies, never to return
Can't you hear my cries?
My soul was left to burn
I'm falling through the mirror
To a world beyond

I open up my window
Welcoming the cold moonlit night
I reach for the pale reflection of the sun
It's taking me forth on a journey
A journey to the world of twilight

Nightfall, take my hand
Guide me away to the stars
I fall into oblivion
Frozen tears are in my eyes
As I now close them to dream away
Slowly drifting forth into the shadows.

Review: Kate & Leopold (2001)

I feel bad for women. They apparently have so little to look forward to in modern men that they'll attend films like "Kate and Leopold" so they can rediscover chivalry. Chivalry, of course, was that male behavior practiced at the turn of the 20th century where men of means stood when a woman left the table, opened the doors for them and regarded them as princesses 24/7.

In this time-travel movie, Stuart (Liev Schreiber) travels back to 1898 New York and brings the aristocratic Leopold (Hugh Jackman) back with him to modern day New York. This turns out to be great for his ex-girlfriend, Kate McKay (Meg Ryan), because Kate has terrible luck with men and is looking for somebody exactly like Leopold, a man with manners. Most of the men in her life are boorish slobs. There's Stuart, of course. Then there's her brother, Charlie (Breckin Meyer), and her boss, J.J. (Bradley Whitford), who's hitting on her as a condition of her promotion. Until Leopold comes along, Kate is all about her career and simply doesn't have time for love.

Indeed, all of Kate and Leopold's interactions are predictably wonderful. Leopold says beautiful things to her, cooks for her, pulls her chair out, and acts the gentleman every second of every day. After all, this was exactly what being a guy in 1898 was all about, right? Fortunately for Kate, Stuart didn't drag back a factory laborer who slaved away 12 hours a day, was missing most of his teeth, and had an expected life span of about 45 years. Apparently director James Mangold cut the scene where Leopold tries to squeeze Kate into a corset and accidentally breaks a few of her ribs. Oh, and then there was the scene where Kate tries to go vote in a local election and Leopold beats her in the middle of the street for attempting to violate the law.

Once again, nostalgia emerges victorious over the actual facts. Ultimately, this movie suggests that women would be happier if they fled the business world and dropped out of sight into the arms of a big, strong man. After all, if Kate were to go back to 1898 New York, isn't that exactly what would happen?

The Raunchy Origins Of Valentine’s Day

If you thought that Valentine's Day was all about innocent romance, then think again. St Valentine may be the patron saint of lovers, but according to a professor at Roanoke College in Virginia, the symbols and imagery of Valentine's Day have much raunchier origins. Psychologist Galdino Pranzarone says that the real meaning of Valentine's Day has been lost over the ages, and the sexy significance of Valentine's symbols has been toned down.

Consider the love heart symbol, suggests Pranzarone, who believes the origin of the heart symbol was probably the shape of human female buttocks seen from the rear. "The Greek goddess of beauty, Aphrodite, was beautiful all over, but was unique in that her buttocks were especially beautiful," he explained. "Her shapely, rounded hemispheres were so appreciated by the Greeks that they built a special temple to Aphrodite Kallipygos, which literally meant, 'Goddess with the Beautiful Buttocks'."

So if the heart symbol is really a female butt, what does Cupid's arrow through the heart symbolize? Cupid - the son of Venus and the Roman god of love - is no innocent little angel, said Pranzarone. "Even though he was a cute cherub, he flew about naked shooting people in the heart with arrows. His relationship with his mother was not particularly wholesome, either. Paintings from the Renaissance show a rather incestuous relationship existing between Cupid and Venus." And what about Cupid's arrow? "Do I really have to explain the obvious symbolism inherent in Cupid's arrow?" asks Pranzarone, clearly wishing to avoid talk about erect phallic symbols. Cupid exists in other cultures as well. In India, Cupid is known as Kama, where he represents passionate, lusty desire. "The famous sex manual of India, the Kama Sutra, was named after him," explains Pranzarone.

Phallic symbols and women's buttocks are probably not what greeting card manufacturers think they're putting on their cards, but Valentines cards have their own interesting history, dating back to the Roman Empire. Pranzarone explains that during the festival of Lupercalia in Rome, "young men chose their sexual partners by a drawing of 'billets', small paper cards, with women's names on them. Christians later denounced the use of these cards as a lewd and pagan custom. The Church tried to substitute the exchange of prayer and sermon cards at this time of year, but the people reverted to hand-made love notes. The commercialization of the Valentine card occurred in recent history at the end of the Victorian Era," he said.

The Lupercalia celebrations, when lovers met through a public raffle, were conducted in February, which Pranzarone said was a decidedly sexy time of the year, representing spring, new life and reproductive activity. "The Romans held love and fertility celebrations in February… a time of love, eroticism and sexual license, [where] enthusiastic revelers were paired up by public raffle."

Popular gifts for Valentine's Day also have their own erotic symbolism, according to Pranzarone, who says that the heart shaped box chocolates usually come in is symbolic of the female genitalia. And as for flowers; "There's no escaping that flowers are the genitalia of plants," he says. "So what are we saying when we present our beloved with a dozen, beautiful red, long-stemmed genitalia?"

Review - Unforgiven (1992)

It comes late in the movie and, coming from Clint Eastwood's steel-trap mouth, it's sweet music. "Any man don't wanna get killed," he warns a saloon full of armed varmints, "better clear on out the back." In "Unforgiven," his trembling opponents don't need a second push. They stampede through the door.

This is Big Whiskey, Wyoming, 1880, and these men (including Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman and Richard Harris) are living in a Western just like they used to make. But the movie's fitted for the '90s too. In this modish world of blow-dried drug dealers, Uzi weaponry and odd-couple cop partners, a six-gun yarn set in the last century better hold its own. Thanks to Eastwood's relaxed direction and David Webb Peoples's savvy script, it does.
In Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, the winner of four 1992 Academy Awards, including best picture and best director, people die just as they have in dozens upon dozens of westerns but with one difference: whereas even the most minor characters killed off in westerns of the past were permitted to die with some dignity, in Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood, directing from an original screenplay by David Webb Peoples, is not concerned with appearances. People die wherever their killer finds them.
In one scene, a man is plugged full of bullets in an outhouse. He spews blood while defecating, his arteries emptying along with his bowels. John Ford, and even Sam Peckinpah, would have let their characters make more graceful exits, at least letting them pull up their pants, but Eastwood makes no concessions to decorum. If the scene was choreographed, it was only to insure that it did not appear rehearsed. One does not watch the scene and express admiration for the "cool" or dramatic way in which the victim stumbles to the ground. In Unforgiven, being killed is an ugly, painful humiliation, almost as much for the killer as it is for the victim.
The plot of Unforgiven is a simple one: a prostitute’s face is slashed by a cowboy who takes offense at the woman’s having laughed at his "small pecker." When the sheriff (Gene Hackman) refuses to punish the crime in a manner that the women consider appropriate (he merely demands that the cowboy repay the saloon owner for the loss of income that will result from the slashed hooker’s diminished appeal to customers), they band together to offer a reward to anyone who will administer a more violent and permanent punishment.

Soon, a young arrogant figure calling himself the "Schofield Kid" (Jaimz Woolvetz) rides onto the Kansas farm of William Munny (Eastwood), a once sadistic killer now reformed through the love of a wife whose grave Munny is seen digging during the opening credits. "I’m not like that no more," Munny tells the Kid, but with two small children and a failing farm to support, Munny eventually accepts the Kid’s offer to join him in pursuit of the "whore’s gold," but only after enticing his former partner, Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman), to share the journey into Big Whiskey, Wyoming, and, of course, sharing the reward.

As they make their way to the town where Sheriff Little Bill Daggett rules in an especially brutal manner when not building a house, on the porch of which he dreams of "drinking my coffee and watching the sunset," Munny and Logan remember their wild and unconscionably violent days which they now regret and believe are safely behind them. Munny is not convinced, however, and continually expresses shame and horror at his past cruelties. He is a haunted man, not at all eager to feed the Kid’s hunger for details about the art of killing.

W.W. Beuchchamp (Saul Rubinek), a writer "of books," as he repeatedly tells those who ask, is as eager as the Kid to hear of the exploits of such merchants of death as Munny, as well as English Bob (Richard Harris), a cold-blooded killer whose romanticized biography Beuchchamp is writing. The elegant Bob arrives in Big Whiskey with Beuchchamp in tow, eager to collect the bounty, but instead of living up to the title that Beuchchamp has given him, "The Duke of Death," Bob gets a severe dressing down from Daggett who exposes the fraud behind English Bob’s legend, in addition to beating the fanciful gunfighter senseless. As Bob lies defeated in Daggett’s jail cell, the cruel yet affable sheriff debunks the myths of the West’s quick-draw and short-tempered killers, including one of Bob’s victims, a man called "two-gun," not, as Beuchchamp believes, because he carried two pistols, but because he had an especially large penis which he once placed in the wrong woman’s holster, leading to his demise at the hands of the jealous Englishman.

With Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood casts a cold objective eye on the realities of the West after the gunsmoke from decades worth of Hollywood westerns has cleared. There are no heroes in Eastwood’s vision, only men and women whose flawed spirits take their toll on the flesh, their own and others. There’s good and bad evident in the best and the worst of the people in Big Whiskey, but it’s the ugly--the ugliness of vanity, revenge, money and death--that Unforgiven emphasizes.

The performances are impeccable. As Munny, Eastwood, often dismissed as a "star" who gets by on his charismatic presence in lieu of acting, offers the finest performance of his long career. Twenty-eight years after A Fistful of Dollars launched him on the road to superstardom, Eastwood’s William Munny could be the laconic and mercenary Man With No Name, now aged and mellow, and mournfully looking back, finally feeling the pain his recklessness had caused others. Gene Hackman’s Oscar winning Little Bill is a man who exploits his sheriff’s badge to maintain an egotistical control over the town, rather than to keep the peace. Morgan Freeman provides the compassionate balance that keeps Munny from drowning in his self-pitying nightmares, and, as the Schoefield Kid, Jaimz Woolveet embodies the youthfully ignorant bravado that Munny and Logan dropped before the Kid was born. There is also an outstanding understated turn by Richard Harris whose marvelous portrait of English Bob compensates for the shameless mugging he has engaged in through a string of unworthy, career killing projects in the two decades preceding this deserved comeback. The rest of the cast, including Frances Fisher as Strawberry Alice, the hooker who proposes that the women seek revenge, and Anna Thompson, the "cut whore," are also excellent.

And then there’s long, lean Anthony James as Skinny, the saloon keeper. Twenty five years earlier, James made his film debut as Ralph, the man behind the counter of the diner where Warren Oates liked to sip Coke and eat pie in another Oscar winner for best picture, In the Heat of the Night. James is one of the great unheralded character actors of our time, and his presence is always welcome.

The cinematography by Jack Green, editing by Oscar winner Joel Cox, sets by Harry Bumstead, and music score by Lennie Niehous (centered on "Claudia’s Theme" written by Eastwood) are all first-rate. The personnel behind the scenes are all regulars in Eastwood’s Malpaso company, and it is interesting to note that Eastwood is the only major director--in fact, the only director currently working--to shun the possessive credit ("A film by...") that was once reserved for the absolute giants of the craft--Hitchcock, Ford, Hawks--but is now claimed by every traffic cop who steps behind a camera. Eastwood recognizes the art of filmmaking as a collaborative effort, one which a director leads but surely cannot do alone. Perhaps Eastwood’s generosity is what makes his team continually strive to deliver their absolute best. With Unforgiven, they have.

Review: The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)

Runtime: 111 Director: Paul Greengrass Starring: Matt Damon, Julia Stiles, David Strathairn

Jason Bourne (Damon) continues his search for his unknown past. After tracking a possible lead to Spain, he joins up with former enemy and government agent Nicky Parsons (Stiles), and has to contend with the continual might of the CIA and the US government on his trail. Meanwhile, agent Pamela Landy (Joan Allen), who has tried to stop Bourne before, has joined forces with CIA Deputy Director Noah Vosen (Strathairn) in a final attempt to kill or capture the renegade assassin.

The Borune Ultimatum is something of a cinematic rarity - a third installment in a trilogy that's actually superior to its predecessors. I wouldn't say it's perfect by any means, and there are some things about it that I genuinely didn't like. But for the most part it's a thrilling ride, and one packed with a calibre of acting you so rarely see in films of this nature.

I confess that five years ago I wouldn't have pegged Matt Damon as an action star, but he really has turned Bourne into a memorable character. Bourne is lethal, efficient and relentless, but the character is also tinged with a hint of desperation and sadness. Damon has always been able to convey the complexities of Bourne, and his performance here is certainly no exception. However, I would say that the vulnerable and almost repressed human side of Bourne has been diminished here, until the final third of the film anyway. In many ways he's almost too deadly and powerful in Ultimatum, hacking through enemies like an SAS-Ninja-Jedi. The result of this is a brilliantly intense character, but one we never think for a second is in any form of danger.

Elsewhere, Strathairn and Allen really do make the most of roles that would have crumbled in lesser hands. Landy and Vosen aren't complicated characters at all, though Landy has her doubts about the intentions of those around her. But the two actors transform scenes that could just look like a couple of grown adults squabbling into something a lot more than that. They might just be standing in rooms talking, but they hook you onto every word. Stiles has a bit more to do here than in the previous films, though Nicky's introduction is a bit too convenient for my liking. That said, there's an unusual chemistry between Stiles and Damon, and the character provides opportunities for the pace to quieten down a bit.

Three films in, and there isn't much plot to talk about anymore since we know what all the characters are up to. So that affords the film more time for action sequences, and there are plenty of them. There's a brutal intensity to them that suits Greengrass's directorial preferences well, and a climatic car case in particular is absolutely electrifying. That said, I do wish someone would buy Greengrass a tripod for his camera. The frantic shaking and zooming is forgivable during the action sequences, though on occasion it does distract from the proceedings. But Greengrass shoots the whole film like this - we really don't need a wobbly camera and quick zooms up actors' noses when they're just sitting down and talking on the phone. His style can sometimes make the film hard to watch; by comparison, even Michael Bay is normally far more restrained in interpersonal scenes.

Whether there will be anymore Bourne films is hard so say, as the film ends on an appropriate point with which to conclude the series. But as a trilogy closer The Bourne Ultimatum is a crackingly good ride, packed full of exhilarating action and engrossing performances.

Nothing But Nothing

Black
Black as night
Black as the dark shadows in my black mind
Black as a blind man's hatred of his vision
Who hates nothing more than blackness.
Who sees little else
Black
Black as death.
Putrefied, abysmal, repungently repulsive, vile death.
Black as my horror of knowing
Who and What I am.
Of knowing what I have done.
Of what I must do and why
Black as the detached loneliness and solitude
Of being unique in my understanding of myself.
Of being solely responsible for myself and my pain
Black as my heart when I reflect on my bitter life.
Total, utter darkness
There are no lights, no tunnels. No hope.
All is lost. Gone. There is nothing there at all.
Only the complete, overwhelming blackness of emptiness & silence.
Silence is my blackest friend.
I have but one friend.

No Pity For The Weak

The blows rained down upon her
As she cried No Stop Don't
The fists smashed into her
Again Again Again
And she sobbed as she described to me
The pain, terror, humiliation
Of this the first of countless beatings
Four years ago.

I looked at her with pitiless eyes
And struggled to mask the disgust I felt
For her the weak pathetic waif
Who will not repel what is killing her
She wants it
Sickly craves it
She needs to be needed
For something, by someone
She deserves her pain
Earned through inaction
And rationalizing that he will change
Her unjustified hope
Gained her four years
Of unmitigated hell.

All around her saw the truth
And knew what she should do
But she dismissed wise advice
Ignored the intelligent path
And chose her fate
With downcast eyes
She deserves her pain
Whether fists or words or apathy
And so will you
So do you.

Cloud Formations Over Jamshedpur

Camera: Panasonic Lumix DMC FX7 Lens: 35-105mm Exposure: 1/4s at f/3

Camera: Panasonic Lumix DMC FX7 Lens: 35-105mm Exposure: 1/8s at f/3

Camera: Panasonic Lumix DMC FX7 Lens: 35-105mm Exposure: 1/4s at f/3

Camera: Panasonic Lumix DMC FX7 Lens: 35-105mm Exposure: 1/4s at f/3

These pictures were taken on 1st September 2007 at various locations in and around Jamshedpur. The cloud formations varied at different times of the day and I captured whatever was possible with the little time I got with my travelling restrictions.

Secret Depression

There's a secret depression in my soul
Welling deep and simmering quietly
Chipping away methodically
At my fire
My ambition
My will to survive
I keep smiling defiantly
Attitude is everything
And no one will know the truth
Of my pain in the dark
Of my really deep thoughts
Of the secret dead
At the base of my heart
That inevitably wins in the end.

Review - Spartacus (1960)

Spartacus, based on Howard Fast's popular novel, is Stanley Kubrick's glorious masterpiece about a slave uprising in Rome in 70 B.C. A young and ambitious Kirk Douglas apparently did not care to lose the title role of Ben-Hur to Charlton Heston. On the policy that outdoing rivals is the best revenge, Douglas plotted a new project. A best selling novel on a Roman slave revolt, light on history but heavy on drama, was written into a screenplay by a writer blacklisted as a Communist sympathizer. A nearly all-star cast was assembled, which included Laurence Olivier (who reputedly thought he would perform better in the title role than Douglas, and only grudgingly accepted a secondary role). The original director of the project was fired, and in his place was brought the artistic Stanley Kubrick (whose eye for dehumanization clashed with Douglas' humanism). The Spanish army was enlisted to ape Roman legionaries, and an epic score was composed to bring orchestral notes. The result, whether foreseen or not, was one of the best films Hollywood ever produced. But it is not about history, and never was.

Douglas' Spartacus is born into slavery and spends his miserable life dreaming of the death of the institution. He believes in honesty, fair play and equality. He would rather be a singer and poet than a fighter. He wants to understand the natural world and the way it works rather than rely on hokey mythology. In short, he presages the humanism and intellectualism of modernity. As he hangs on his cross at the end, watching his now free wife and son leave Rome behind, we are to anticipate... what exactly? The coming of Christianity and a new breed of morality? A proletariat revolution? The end of Hollywood blacklisting? Perhaps all the above.

As a piece of historical validity, the movie is bollocks. Spartacus was not born into slavery, but sold into it after deserting the Roman armies. He sought not the end of slavery, but merely to turn the tables on his former masters. Nor was he crucified, but presumed dead on the battlefield.

Spartacus is a movie that firmly establishes pagan Rome as an Evil Empire, against which either Judeo-Christian morality or post-industrial humanism may be contrasted. The opening dialogue in fact offers some of the worst over-the-top moralizing in history of cinema; something about the evils of pagan Rome which the future religion of Christianity shall cleanse. I am not altogether convinced the theocracy and serfdom of Medieval Christianity was any more virtuous than the paganism and slavery of Ancient Rome.

In a sense, though, this is all beside the point. Spartacus is not about history, but aesthetics. We have superb customs and scenery (for 1960). We have a memorable score; the haunting love melody between Spartacus and Varinia, and the harsh martial blasts that announce Crassus. We have the Spanish army offering a shivering impression of what a Roman legion must have looked like marching into the field of battle. And we get a sense, thanks to the training school of Capua, of the rigors of gladiatorial study. The movie won four academy awards, three of which are in these technical areas and are all well deserved.

But most of all, we have superb acting. Forty-seven years later, Olivier's shining performance as Crassus still sets the standard for the self-aware dignitas and gravitas projected by a Roman patrician. Indeed, in the modern age one assumes a Roman patrician should have a cultured British accent. Olivier should not have suffered any insults for playing second banana to Douglas, for his commanding presence steals all the scenes in which he performs. His harangue of the Roman Senate and army before the showdown with the rebels should be required viewing for orators. Olivier is also perhaps the only actor that can convincingly deliver such lines as: 'Rome is an eternal thought in the mind of God.' Too bad the historical Crassus was neither so conservative nor as dignified (oh, but I need to remind myself this is not about history).

Charles Laughton plays another kind of patrician, one that every American frat boy trains to imitate: a senator given to looser morals and more corpulent pleasures. Laughton is delightful as the kind but wily Gracchus, lover and beloved of the people, guardian of Rome's left wing.

The real ham, and the one who actually won an academy award, is Peter Ustinov. Lentulus Batiatus is a fawning middle class Roman lanista, forever seeking profit and ingratiating advancement at the hands of his patrician betters. Crassus and Spartacus both offer, in their own ways, ideals that mean little to Batiatus' business minded pragmatism. Watch Ustinov scurry about at this deliciously pathetic “sesterci” pincher, displaced by his former slave's revolt and groveling before the sinister Crassus and benevolent Gracchus! It is one of the wonders of Hollywood's Silver Age.

Then we have Tony Curtis, perhaps best known in the modern age for contributing one half the chromosomes that created the wondrous body of Jamie Lee Curtis. But before that, the Bronx native was apparently a star in his own right. He plays Antoninus, a house servant trained in Greek culture. He finds his way into Crassus' employment. The conservative Roman senator sneers at this product of Greek aesthetics, and could find better uses for the handsome slave. The famous scene has Curtis cringing before Olivier's veiled hints of bisexuality. (In the historical world, a Roman patrician would not have had to justify his bisexuality to anyone, least of all a lowly slave, but I seem to forget this movie is not about history). In any event, Antoninus escapes to join the slave army, and becomes the educated foil to Douglas' illiterate rebel leader. The cultured slave and the warrior slave wish they could be like each other. In them we are supposed to see embodied the refined peace and just war promised by the slave revolt.

The one downside in the acting cornucopia is the fellow who played Glaborus. I am not sure of his name, but it is best forgotten. I have seen better acting from street vendors.

I should mention something about the famous scene where the survivors of the slave army stand up and shout 'I am Spartacus!' to prevent the actual Spartacus from being identified. They are, indeed, all Spartacus. For Spartacus is no longer a man; he has become an ideal, etched into the souls of all freedom loving people, breathed into the life of the yearning masses straining from oppression. I guess, once again, it is not about history.

The Poison Of Religion

I hate the polarizing effect of organized religion and the fact that if you aren't of _____ religion then you're going to hell or some other eternal damnation. If you think Ganguly is arrogant, how arrogant is a man who professes to speak on behalf of some make-believe God or professes to be able to help save your "soul"? No wonder the Church went on the great Crusades and killed thousands of Muslims who now kill thousands of others or backward ass religious leaders who burned witches at the stake. Remember The Inquisition? I've never heard of a group of realists/humanists/reasonists committing atrocities like that. Thank God I was never an altar boy that had to play Mr. Stinky Finger with a catholic priest.

I have nothing against religious people. 99.9% of my friends claim to belong to this religion or that. I don't think religion makes them good people though. I think they'd be good people without religion. Hell, how many murderers, rapists, child molesters, etc were members of a religion before they committed their crimes? Jim Jones anyone? How about Pope John XII? Religion didn't make them good people. People are people and good or bad has nothing to do with religion. But, the pendulum swings and whereas religion doesn't make you good, many religious people I know believe that a lack of religion makes a person bad. I suppose people believe in only certain parts of their own religion because some in the Christian/Catholic religions forget the part about "Judge not lest ye be judged." A friend a while back who was going through a rough time told me "If you found God, you'd find happiness." Well, I replied with... "I am happy. I don't need an imaginary force to rely on. I'm happy every day and I haven't been angry in a couple of years and I haven't been sad or depressed in many years. You evidently have found God and you're crying your ass off every day for a week. Where is that happiness?" It should be noted I wasn't knocking my friend because of his/her religion. I was only defending my beliefs because for some reason he/she thought I was unhappy. Quite the contrary.

The unfortunate side is that my "lack of religion" has caused one of my relationships with girlfriends to fall apart. Funny.. A person claiming to be a Hindu and has premarital sex and drinking and smoking most nights of the week gets upset with me because I don't go to temples or churches or mosques or believe in a higher power.

Amazing...

I should mention one thing. I don't totally negate the possibility of a higher power. I only wait to see physical evidence (proof) of said higher power and in that event, I'll shut the hell up.

Just yesterday my best friend (who is catholic) and his girlfriend (who is catholic) were here in the office. She told me that I HAD to believe in something or I would never find happiness. I told her as I've told everyone else "I am very happy." I went on to tell her "I believe in you, I believe in Joe, I believe in myself. If YOU fuck me over, it's not because of God or Satan or Mars, it's because of YOU." She shut up after that.

It's unfair in so many ways that an atheist is looked down upon no matter that the person may be kind, decent, fair, family oriented, responsible, etc.

Many of my atheist type friends prefer the term "Skeptic" since "atheist" seems more polarizing. I think religious folks should be the "skeptics". Why is a person who believes in science and can see proof of what the world is, where it came from, how old it is and what makes up the galaxy be a skeptic? The person who doesn't believe in proven science should be the skeptic. They base their lives on some religious text and mythology and can't prove any of it yet they aren't the skeptic?

There is something decidedly wrong with that.

Apocalypto (2006) --- Review

Apocalypto brings out what's unique and gripping in Gibson as a director. It's pure adrenaline -- a tremendously exciting chase movie, shot in Mexico, that just happens to be set in ancient Maya with dialogue spoken in Yucatec Maya, with English subtitles. Heck, you lived through Latin and Aramaic in Gibson's Passion of the Christ, so don't be a wussy. Actually, you'd better not be gore-shy, because Apocalypto is one brutal and bloody ride.

The plot, cooked up by Gibson and Farhad Safinia, focuses on Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), a braveheart if ever there was one. Even women and children are killed when his village is attacked by another tribe. After hiding his pregnant wife and young son in a cave, Jaguar goes on the run experiencing adventures that would give Indiana Jones the screaming meemies. The movie flies by fast enough to cause whiplash. Youngblood, 25, is a Comanche and Cree Indian from Texas, and he holds the screen every treacherous inch of the way, suffering penitential hardships from spears, snakes and tribal rulers intent on removing his heart while it's still beating.

This being Gibson, there's more to the film than the rush. It's impossible not to see parallels to our own cultured civilization, one that knowingly destroys its environment and sends troops to Iraq as human sacrifices. Gibson has made a film of blunt provocation and bruising beauty -- it's breathtaking to watch a jaguar racing in the jungle alongside the man who is named after the beast. Say what you will about Gibson, he's a filmmaker right down to his nerve endings.

Having said all this, I have this to say - the movie's not violent enough. Okay, so it's gruesome, with the mano-a-mano scenes where one bashes the other's head in. But today's audience really is quite used to that, and Mel Gibson knows enough not to push the point - so in fact the sequence of the ransacking of the village was rather tame. You know people are being killed but you don't really see it and you don't hear a lot of bone-crunching sounds. Gibson pushes the violence where it counts - when it gets personal.

You see, people simplistically associate Gibson with violent movies. They think that what he really likes is to make violent movies. Idiots. Watch closely. The one consistent motif is the feeling of desired vengeance it arouses in the audience. Gibson is very good at setting up conflict between characters, but not just any conflict, it's one specific type of conflict - where the bully unreasonably heckles the protagonist and destroys his life around him so very completely, arousing the desire in the audience to want to reach in and choke the bully ... but ah, that's not what movies are supposed to do. Movies are for the protagonist to go through trials, gain his strength - and then launch into what is known as 'payback time'. That's what Gibson has always done in his movies and what he does best.

As for the whole Mayan civilisation thing, well it doesn't really involve too much of the Mayan (as in, the city dwellers) themselves. The thing is I love movies that are set in ancient times. Unfortunately those movies almost don't exist. They don't make them coz the public is too stupid to watch them. Or it's just that I'm weird and unique in a lonely sense, the same way that Alexander was lonely because no one understood him or his vision and ambitions. (I plugged in lonely coz so many people come up with the rebuke "everybody's weird", which is also saying that nobody's weird. Which defeats the point.) Which is why I'm glad Gibson went ahead to make this film, and in a forgotten/dying language as well - he is the only one with the money to do so (big fat money from The Passion Of The Christ, yeah!) and the interest in it as well. The only one. Other directors are hired to make movies like Troy or King Arthur.

Now I'm getting to why I don't think the movie is violent enough. You see, I got really fascinated when watching a documentary/reading an article about the Aztecs (who are different from the Mayans, who are different from the Incans ... but how could you guys tell? I can't), about how they have this sacrificial ritual (annually?). They line up up to 20,000 prisoners captured from neighbouring villages, along the way up the largest ziggurat in the middle of the capital, with the entire population descending into trance as high priests rip out the hearts of the prisoners, drink their blood, and chop their heads off and fling it off the ziggurat, then the body as well. Now, when I imagined that scene, I imagined it with the ziggurat filled with blood from top to bottom, the blood slowly flooding the bottom of the ziggurat, moving through the feet of those closest to the ziggurat, the stench of the blood pouring from the bodies, the flop-flop sound of the bodies being flung off the ziggurat going down the stairs, the squeezing of the half-beating hearts to squish out the blood, the messiness of it all, and the entire population with their eyes going up into their heads. Anyways, archaelogists today try to explain the fall of the Aztecs by the fact that their thirst for prisoners for the sacrifice forced them to ravage village upon village which, understandably, causes undue resentment and eventually the neighbouring tribes co-operated with the impending conquistadors to bring down the Aztecs. But that's beside the point.

The point is, I actually imagined the ziggurat sacrificial scenes, and thought, wow, if I could make a movie like that ... no one would watch it. People would be too pussy to watch it. Heck, I'm scaring myself - it's a really scary sight.

You don't get that in Apocalypto. No. Apocalypto is a movie designed for 21st century audiences - it's too barbaric to stage it as bloody as that, plus people might not believe it. Some might even have thought that Gibson did that purely for violence's sake. The sacrificial sequence in the movie is still scary. It's just that I'm the only person in the world who thought he didn't go far enough.

Now, to the characters - wow, they set it up pretty well. The actor who played the main character, Jaguar Paw (which I'm sure sounds a whole lot better and a whole lot less contrived in the language they speak), is surprisingly charismatic. Even though it's almost entirely a physical role, in the beginning we see him as this pensive person, the only one who goes into his mind, and it takes his father and his wife to call him back. In effect he's the modern hero - one who is physically adept as well as mentally agile. As for the rest of the characters, it's kinda hard for them to screw it up, since it's pretty on-the-nose - they're either trying their very best to kill someone, or trying their very best to survive. Such are the times in (what is apparently) 15th century Central America.

Visually - wow. I'm guessing that is hi-def. Thing is, the whole movie is shot with the Nat Geo look - for the film students, what we have here is pretty deep depth of field. It took a while to get used to it. At any case it is a beautiful film to look at. The costume design and make-up departments deserve kudos as well, they were so well done that it suggests a certain level of complexity in the social structures, plus incredibly detailed textures on the men's bodies.

Now, because this is a Mel Gibson film it still requires suspension of disbelief. Some of the scenes are a little over-the-top - not too much, just a little. But I enjoyed it.

Just this. Please, do yourself a favour. Don't go watch this film when you're in the mood for something more like The Queen, and then come out of the cinema saying the film sucks. Assholes.

Words Are Not Offensive, People Are

Words and speech are powerful tools of communication. Combined with inflection and body language, they are used to convey information from one person to another. This is done directly (the literal translation of the words) and indirectly (the context of what is being said). Though it doesn't seem particularly obvious to us at most times, words, when spoken or read, have two separate meanings – the meaning intended by the speaker/writer, and the meaning understood by the listener/reader. The distinction between the two is very important, because the greater the difference there is between what is meant and what is understood dictates how effectively we are communicating. Our goal, then, is to close the gap between what is intended and what is understood. Only then can a free and meaningful exchange of ideas occur, such that real consensus can be reached.

It is with that goal in mind that I address the issue of offensive speech. There are currently words in the English language that are considered offensive. The commonality between them is their association with offensive objects and/or offensive ideas. Thus, society treats these words as taboo – they are avoided in many social and professional contexts and are banned from use by children and general access media. Some words are considered so bad that efforts are made to ban their use completely. What seems to be forgotten, however, is that though these words are concise symbols of offensive things and ideas, they are just that – only symbols – and thus they are not necessary for the expression of such objects or ideas. I can be quite offensive to people by using strictly acceptable words. Remember too, that for a word to be offensive, it requires someone to consider it offensive – if the receiver of the message did not consider it to be offensive, then despite the best efforts of the communicator, the message would be meaningless.

This brings me to my point – why can we not simply stop being offended by words, and thus take away their meaning and power? When trying to be offensive, the goal is to evoke a negative reaction from the receiver of the message. If no such reaction is garnered, then the act is meaningless. We would be effectively robbing bigoted people of a very simple and effective tool. It would be different if banning offensive words actually contributed to a decrease in offensive behaviour. However, only education and understanding can make such a contribution. Ironically, the banning of offensive words only increases the negativity of these words, increasing their power and effectiveness. Additionally, banning words can be counterproductive in that it can provide the illusion that the decrease in the use of the words might equal a decrease in offensive ideas in society and progress in the fight against ignorance and prejudice. It would seem that any benefit in banning offensive words would be purely superficial; the bad clearly outweighs the good.

I realize that ceasing our negative reactions to offensive words is easier said than done, but I do believe that with practice, it is achievable. But then again, what do I know? I’m just some retarded, incessantly rambling faggot.

Before Sunrise (1995) - Review

This is a sweet romantic movie I have seen in a very long time.

Director Richard Linklater, with BEFORE SUNRISE, has created a special dialogue-driven dating movie. Throughout, most of the film, the intrinsic story follows a cute young couple through a long, first date. A French graduate student, Celine (Julie Delpy), and an American boy, Jesse (Ethan Hawke), meet on a Budapest-Vienna train. It starts with a contingent encounter in the afternoon on the train, and goes throughout the night and until the early morning, turning into a 14 hour date.

Considering that Linklater's previous films were SLACKER and DAZED AND CONFUSED, BEFORE SUNRISE is a surprisingly mature work. One of the film strengths is that it captures the flavor and fluid structure of a first date, hooking the audience with "intriguing conversations" and the couples' spontaneity. You get to know the characters as they get to know each other, just like a first date, "as the two share in their love for the unrehearsed and their appreciation for the unexpected as they explore in a powerful meeting of hearts and minds."

The well cast movie has cute romantic moments. My favorite scene, takes place early on in the film, on a train. Charming young passenger, Hawke, makes an amazing pitch for Delpy to spontaneously get off the train with him, involving time travel and her future regret about missing an opportunity to spend time with the "right guy." It's the kind of crazy pitch that only a young guy would try, and only a young girl would go for. Oh to be young!

Lee Daniel did a terrific job with the cinematography, especially with his effective lensing of the atmospheric Vienna locations, which enhances the viewing experience.

BEFORE SUNRISE must be popular with people who enjoy romance films, that are unpretentious and grounded in realism. Although the pacing is slow at times, it's congruous, creating the right overall mood of the all-night date. "Before Sunrise" even has suspense, making the viewer guess if the couple will end up with each other. Romantics will be well satisfied by the ending.

We then see them condense the entire course of a relationship into less than 24 hours, with all the usual landmarks (the initial goo-goo eyes, the first kiss, the first fight, etc.) played out against the sumptuous Viennese backdrop. Hawke is engagingly goofy and Delpy, despite a tendency to overplay the intellectual waif card, is more than a match for him. See it with someone you love. Even better, see it by yourself and pick up a total stranger in the lobby afterwards. :)

The Best Is Yet To Come

It's not too late.
It's not too late at all.
You're young.
You have many years to go.
Why do you lament your finite moments
When so many more lie ahead?
If it's college degrees you want,
You can have a dozen or more.
If you want a career,
You have decades to have several.
Why lament the current status quo?
You know one thing,
Or else you're just pathetic.
You will be alive.
So what does that mean?
It means you'll get through whatever the hell comes
And you will be alive.
So you will have the time.
The time to control your own destiny.
You aren't through with options yet.
Oppurtunity is a grain of sand
On the infinite beach if time.
Implementation is the bitch.
That's the true test of the power of your spirit.
Can you make it happen?
Or are you just a dreamer and a spectator?
We're young, you and I.
We can, and will, eventually rule the world
And all reality as we know it.
Let's take a deep breath,
And focus on growth.
The best is yet to come !

I Can't Change For You

You cannot ask someone to change
As a prerequisite to being with you
I have struggled a lifetime to change myself
With mixed success
Do you think I could change for you
Easier than for myself?
I am who I am.
With strengths and weaknesses.
I should try hard.
I can be motivated to be at my best.
I want that external motivation.
Someone urging me to improve myself,
Further my goals,
Succeed and prosper.
But that is encouragement,
Not requirement.
I will either change
Or I won't.
I will do the best I can
No more.
Love me for who I am now
Or don't love me at all.

Love & Freedom

We lust for freedom,
But long to be captured;
Kill for power,
But live for pleasure;
And die for love.

Where are you when so much time to myself makes me reckless and restless. When the words won't quit and my fingers are tired and I'm wishing that I could pause for a moment and have something else to appease my passions. Where is everyone? Where have they ever been? No place that I know of and not the darknesss that I've been in.
Lately time moves so quickly and I don't understand it because under the circumstances I would expect it to move slowly. But I guess I am different. Always have been. It's times of happiness that every hour feels like years. That space between one weekend and the next infinite when there's someone that you miss but when sadness unfold its musty blanket time speeds up. Months expire in minutes and I go back and read the days trying to remember what was. Even still, even with the triggers it seems all a dream that I've been sleeping since.

Nothing seems real. Not one single solitary breath. All the months seemed to expire in only minutes. I don't feel like I've been alive at all. Not since.

Such unusual ideas caught in dead eyes.
Hope bereft.
Faith unkind.
Polaroid friends.
Instant photographs lacking dimension.
Born so bloody.
So small, so weak.
Incubated infancy.
I survived.
But then i never really did.
Just kept on breathing without any reason.
And then they all question why.
Why such unsual eyes caught in dead eyes.
They push me like piano keys.
Wanting me to sing.
But i just avert my gaze.
So that they won't see.

The Shawshank Redemption (1994) - Review

Ireally don't know how I didn't see this movie which released in 1994 till I had the oppurtunity last night.

"Some birds are not meant to be caged, their feathers are just too bright"

The words resounded not just through my mind and ears but through my soul as the end credits rolled and I had the experience of a lifetime as the movie came to an end.

The last place one would imagine to find hope would be a prison. Moreover, the last movie in which one would expect to find hope is a prison movie. However, in "The Shawshank Redemption", hope is exactly what we get.

"The Shawshank Redemption" is the story of Andy Dufresne ( played sensitively by Tim Robbins) - a big shot banker who is sent to gallows of Shawshank Prison after being falsely implicated in the murder of his unfaithful wife and her boyfriend. Andy leaves behind a world of champagne, chiffon and grief (owing to his darling wife’s murder and his implication) to enter another world of grief minus the chiffon and champagne. Shawshank Prison is a hopeless hell - dark, frigid, ruthless with gallons of devilry and pinches of sunshine humanity. Shawshank is one of the most hellish prisons run by a bunch of uniformed devils who see no difference between criminals and dead cattle. And the reins of this living hell are held in the hands of Warden Norton - who lives by the Holy Bible but is in love with the devil. And here comes Andy Dufrsene - a living dead with a genius mind and a loving heart.

The journey of Andy is seen through the eyes of Red (The irrepressible and ever dependable Morgan Freeman) - another prisoner at Shawshank who is a happy-go-lucky cad, somebody who has hardened himself to the cold walls of Shawshank and lives by the rules. For him, Andy is a paradox he can never fathom or understand. Andy’s mysterious charm, his enigmatic persona and the light of humanity that he sees in Andy’s straight expressionless face first intrigues him, then fascinates him and finally bonds him to this abysmal man.

Andy first settles into the Shawshank Prison after a few harsh brushes with the guards like Captain Hadley, the devil in robes Warden Norton, the gay "sisterhood" molestors and many other hurdles .....slowly his genius and intelligence at finances wins over the jail authorities and his sunshine human touch stirs up something inside every frigid criminal ....Andy makes his own place - both in the jail and in Red’s heart.......And one fine day , after more than ninteen years in the prison, triggered by the cold murder of a harmless small-time cad Tommy (of whom Andy had grown increasingly fond of) by the guards, Andy ESCAPES Shawshank through a vent he made behind Rita Hayworth’s poster for two decades )- making sure that after he is gone, the corrupt warden and his gang is taken off Shawshank so that the prisoners can at least live wih dignity ....and that Red finds his way to Andy upon his release.....

More than the plot, the story - it’s the soul of the film , soul-stirring moments and the enigmatic characters who dissolve in you when you watch the film. The film makes you want to believe on whatever Andy believed in ....and you know what he believed in and what kept him sailing throgh those ninteen agonizing years ?....HOPE.....Andy soon learnt that if there’s one thing inside all of us that nobody can take away from us, then it’s hope ... the hope for tomorrow , the hope for realizing the most distant dreams and the hope of survival. All through the hellish time at Shawshank that Andy was getting beaten up and bullied, maintaining accounts for corrupt Shawshank officials (which he used to expose them), making library records, instilling hope and light in dead minds and hearts - he was actually getting nearer to his dream of garnering freedom, of living his dream life one fine day fishing by the vast blue sea.....and when that chance was taken away from him by the Shawshank officials (they killed Tommy whose testimony could have released Andy of the charges for their own ulterior motives), he takes his own flight to freedom and stands against the rain and screams -the scream of a free-being.....

Shawshank Redemption can be termed motivational....inspirational....and all those adjectives that refer to optimism . But more than that it’s a lesson of life that Frank Darrabont has put forth for the viewers .....in the darkest hour, there’s promise of light and believing in that promise is what hope is all about. If there’s one thing that keeps all of us alive , then it’s hope....a hope for a better tomorrow. The film reminds you that heaven and hell are inside us - watch Andy Dufrsene create his own heaven in the cold hell of Shawshank and make his fellow prisoners a part of his little paradise. Andy defines the power of human spirit .....Red defines the margins between good and bad how much all of us yearn to return to our innocence (Red might be a old criminal but his heart still beats for innocence).....Above all, Shawshank Redemption instils in you the age old faith - Salvation lies within.......

Enough said, the film is an experience to be lived and savoured.

Here are a few of my favourite moments from the film ....Do look out for them :

1. Andy saying , "Hope is a good thing , perhaps the best of all things.... and good things don’t die."

2. Andy playing music in Warden Norton’s office. The music reaches the ears and hearts of all prison inmates and they all stand still in that moment of heavenly bliss.

3. Red sitting in front of the jury for his release and telling the young officials that he has learnt what he had to and frankly he doesn’t give a damn about being released or being retained in prison.

4. Old Brooks writing on a ceiling "Brooks was here " and hanging himself to death. His old age, his helplessness was so moving!

5. Red and Andy meeting against the blue sea in the end.....their souls blowing in the winds of freedom

And guys, Red’s words are echoing wisdom. "Get busy living or get busy dying"

The screenplay is full of moving and beautifully etched scenes threaded together meticulously into a fabulous film....the cinematography is all charcoal and sunshine and in this contrast lies the beauty of the film. All performers are classic, Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman of course take the cake. All in all, Shawshank Redemption made me believe in the paradise within and the promise of hope.

This review has been written to share what the film made me feel and if in the attempt of the same I have missed out some details, fogive me.

Spes Somes!

I'm addicted to you baby

I'm addicted to you
To your smell
To your touch
To touching you
Holding you
Caressing you as we merge
Entering each other
Joining within
You are my muse
My inspiration
My well of creativity
From which I drink all too often.
And yet the dangers of pleasure
And the consequencess of excess
Have brought me to this point
I think we need a separation
I need a rest
Time to recuperate
To recover from what has unquestionably been
EXCESS
For a very long time
It's time for a break
No more bong hits for a while !

Leap

I don't know the answer, the secret is kept
The solution eludes me, the leap can't be leapt
One thing that I know and this is for certain
The veil has been rent, no more is the curtain.
To stand before God, is what He allows
But what do I say? He doesn't want vows.
He loves me and hears me and cares for my life
He won't let me be overburdened with strife
And yet there's a secret and I do not know
What I am to do, where I am to go.
I thought at one time, a preacher I'd be
But now I don't know if that's His will for me.
No one is around, I'm always alone
They seem to not like me, no interest they've shown.
Am I weird, do I stink, do I bug them somehow?
Why am I alone, do I look like a cow?
I hope it's because of some heavenly goal.
What it is I don't know, it's taking it's toll.
Maybe it's me expecting too much
Maybe no one has friends and buddies and such.
I don't know the answer, the secret is kept.
The solution eludes me, the leap can't be leapt.

Shit

The Ghost Shit
The kind where you feel shit come out, see shit on the toilet paper, but there's no shit in the bowl.

The Clean Shit
The kind where you feel shit come out, see shit in the bowl, but there's no shit on the toilet paper.

The Wet Shit
You wipe your ass fifty times and it still feels unwiped. So you end up putting toilet paper between your ass and your underwear so you don't ruin them with those dreadful skid marks.

The Second Wave Shit
This shit happens when you've finished, your pants are up to your knees, and you suddenly realize you have to shit some more.

The Brain Hemorrahage Through Your Nose Shit
Also known as "Pop a Vein in Your Forehead Shit". You have to strain so much to get it out that you turn purple and practically have a stroke.

The Corn Shit
No explanation necessary.

The Lincoln Log Shit
The kind of shit that's so enormous you're afraid to flush it down without first breaking it up into little pieces with the toilet brush.

The Notorious Drinker Shit
The kind of shit you have the morning after a long night of drinking. It's most noticeable trait is the tread mark left on the bottom of the toilet bowl after you flush.

The "Gee, I Really Wish I Could Shit" Shit
The kind where you want to shit, but even after straining your guts out, all you can do is sit on the toilet, cramped and farting.

The Wet Cheeks Shit
Also known as the "Power Dump". That's the kind that comes out of your ass so fast that your butt cheeks get splashed with the toilet water.

The Liquid Shit
That's the kind where yellowish-brown liquid shoots out of your butt, splashes all over the side of the toilet bowl and, at the same time, chronically burns your tender poop-chute.

The Mexican Food Shit
A class all on its own.

The Crowd Pleaser
This shit is so intriguing in size and/or appearance that you have to show it to someone before flushing.

The Mood Enhancer
This shit occurs after a lengthy period of constipation, thereby allowing you to be your old self again.

The Ritual
This shit occurs at the same time each day and is accomplished with the aid of a newspaper.

The Guinness Book Of Records Shit
A shit so noteworthy it should be recorded for future generations.

The Aftershock Shit
This shit has an odour so powerful than anyone entering the vicinity within the next seven hours is affected.

The "Honeymoon's Over" Shit
This is any shit created in the presence of another person.

The Groaner
A shit so huge it cannot exit without vocal assistance.

The Floater
Characterized by its floatability, this shit has been known to resurface after many flushings.

The Ranger
A shit which refuses to let go. It is usually necessary to engage in a rocking or bouncing motion, but quite often the only solution is to push it away with a small piece of toilet paper.

The Phantom Shit
This appears in the toilet mysteriously and no one will admit to putting it there.

The Peek-A-Boo Shit
Now you see it, now you don't. This shit is playing games with you. Requires patience and muscle control.

The Bombshell
A shit that comes as a complete surprise at a time that is either inappropriate to shit (i.e. during lovemaking or a root canal) or you are nowhere near shitting facilities.

The Snake Charmer
A long skinny shit which has managed to coil itself into a frightening position - usually harmless.

The Olympic Shit
This shit occurs exactly one hour prior to the start of any competitive event in which you are entered and bears a close resemblance to the Drinker's Shit.

The Back-To-Nature Shit
This shit may be of any variety but is always deposited either in the woods or while hiding behind the passenger side of your car.

The Pebbles-From-Heaven Shit
An adorable collection of small turds in a cluster, often a gift from God when you actually can't shit.

Premeditated Shit
Laxative induced. Doesn't count.

Shitzopherenia
Fear of shitting - can be fatal!

Energizer Vs. Duracell Shit
Also known as a "Still Going" shit.

The Power Dump Shit
The kind that comes out so fast, you barely get your pants down when you're done.

The Liquid Plumber Shit
This kind of shit is so big it plugs up the toilet and it overflows all over the floor. (You should have followed the advice from the Lincoln Log Shit.)

The Spinal Tap Shit
The kind of shit that hurts so much coming out, you'd swear it's got to be coming out sideways.

The "I Think I'm Giving Birth Through My Asshole" Shit
Similar to the Lincoln Log and The Spinal Tap Shits. The shape and size of the turd resembles a tall boy beer can. Vacuous air space remains in the rectum for some time afterwards.

The Porridge Shit
The type that comes out like toothpaste, and just keeps on coming. You have two choices: a) flush and keep going, or b) risk it piling up to your butt while you sit there helpless.

The "I'm Going To Chew My Food Better" Shit
When the bag of Doritos you ate last night lacerates the insides of your rectum on the way out in the morning.

The "I Think I'm Turning Into A Bunny" Shit
When you drop lots of cute, little round ones that look like marbles and make tiny splashing sounds when they hit the water.

The "What The Hell Died In Here?" Shit
Also sometimes referred to as "The Toxic Dump". Of course you don't warn anyone of the poisonous bathroom odour. Instead, you stand innocently near the door and enjoy the show as they run out gagging and gasping for air.

The "I Just Know There's A Turd Still Dangling There" Shit
Where you just sit there patiently and wait for the last cling-on to drop off because if you wipe now, it's going to smear all over the place.