Time

The Cinema of Wong Kar-Wai@Everything2.com: "Time, to me, forever brings a loss of innocence. As you go through time, you are bound to look back with hindsight; you begin to reminisce about things that you dreamed about doing but didn't get to do, you begin to wonder what would have happened on that particular day if you had taken a different turn on the road. You have no answer for sure, but you are distressed by the possible outcome of things you didn't do. You cannot help but regret"
~Wong Kar-wai


Watched Days of Being Wild, Fallen Angels and Chungking Express back to back on sunday. Something I would never have to regret not doing.

Story that will make you believe in God

Indian Coffee House, Jawaharlal Nehru Street, Pondicherry

"I arrived in the town of Pondicherry, a tiny self-governing Union Territory south of Madras, on the coast of Tamil Nadu. In population and size it is an inconsequent part of India-by comparison, Prince Edward Island is a giant within Canada-but history has set it apart. For Pondicherry was once the capital of that most modest of colonial empires, French India. The French would have liked to rival the British, very much so, but the only Raj they managed to get was a handful of small ports. They clung to these for nearly three hundred years. They left Pondicherry in 1954, leaving behind nice white buildings, broad streets at right angles to each other, street names such as rue de la Marine and rue Saint-Louis, and képis, caps, for the policemen.

I was at the Indian Coffee House, on Nehru Street. It's one big room with green walls and a high ceiling. Fans whirl above you to keep the warm, humid air moving. The place is furnished to capacity with identical square tables, each with its complement of four chairs. You sit where you can, with whoever is at a table. The coffee is good and they serve French toast. Conversation is easy to come by. And so, a spry, bright-eyed elderly man with great shocks of pure white hair was talking to me. I confirmed to him that Canada was cold and that French was indeed spoken in parts of it and that I liked India and so on and so forth-the usual light talk between friendly, curious Indians and foreign backpackers. He took in my line of work with a widening of the eyes and a nodding of the head. It was time to go. I had my hand up, trying to catch my waiter's eye to get the bill.

Then the elderly man said, "I have a story that will make you believe in God.""

Author's Note
Life Of Pi
Yann Martel

Movie making at its best...

HERO-Ying xiong (2002):
"The imagery is unparallelled, simply draw-droppingly near perfect scenes, with bold and vibrant use of colour, symbolism and scenery. The fluent flow of the storyline, the delicate direction of the sword slicing action, the Chinese cultural concepts and the emotionally charged scenes between characters combine to produce a simply remarkable achievement."

Stunning cinematography. A must watch for anyone learning cinema.
Excellent use of colour.
Each scene is painted in a single colour.
It actually goes from gray to red to blue to white to green to black in that order.
Grander than anything I have ever seen on screen.
My favourite is where Nameless (Jet Lee) is fighting Sky.
Its raining and you can see each and every individual drop of water move. Old blind man is playing an string instrument as these to fight it out. Sky flicks the spear, droplets of water from a piece of cloth tied to it go spiraling into the air. Jet Lee Leaps. In slow motion you can see the water almost stationary in mid air as Jet Lee's face crashes through this wall of water. The tip of the sword piercing the rain.
Stunning...

Breakfast Worth Riding 140 Kms for

Sunday Morning,
Started for a bike ride to nowhere...
We were almost there (midle of nowhere) when we see a rock and decide to explore.
Turns out to be good old Shivganga :-)
That thing in my plate is Tatte Idli (YUP, its ONE idli)
One idli, one tea, three hours, 140 kms, Good Morning...

GOOF UP of the day

Did you read Page 19 Times Of India, Bangalore edition?
The news reads

RAINBOW AS SEHWAG POURS

By Bobbilli Vijay Kumar/TNN

Mohali: Virender Sehwag probably does not like sitting in the pavilion, strapped to leg-guards and doodling away with an unwieldy willow.
He is India's new man in a hurry and he smartly turned his impatience into a virtue here on a rain seduced Wednesday. Riding on two lives, a sharp eye and quicksilver reflexes, he cut and drove towards his ninth Test century and Pakistan to virtual despair.

Wonder if it was a Typo error of Bobilli (Nice name) actually found the rain seductive and was not trying to say "rain reduuced"

Reminds me of another one.
This was Sanjay Manjrekar.

Bangladesh Vs Zimbabwe Test match in Dhaka. (I have had desperate times in life when I had nothing better to do in life than watch this one on TV)

Bangladesh captain Habibul Bashar was being given some short pitch treatment.
First time he get hit on shoulder. Second time, heagain goes for the hook and ball pops up but he is safe. Nex time, the leg side is packed behind square. Square Leg, Deep Fine Leg on the fence.
Short ball and Bashar still goes for the hook shot.

Commenting on Bashar's shot selection Manjrekar says
"Bangladeshi skipper is a compulsive hooker"
.....Breif pause in commentary...Coca cola Ad.

What Visuals!!!

"Stunning" is gross underststement.

(Check out the pictures on the site)

Baraka - A film / movie by Ron Fricke, Mark Magidson, music by Michael Stearns, shot on 70mm, contains World, Travel, Time lapse: "Visual images include...
Tibetan monks, Orthodox Jews, Whirling Dervishes, a solar eclipse, Buddhist monks, African tribal rituals, Jerusalem's Wailing Wall, rain forests, Ayers Rock, Big Sur country, Hawaiian volcanoes, Brazilian slums, time-lapse footage of car and pedestrian traffic, post-Persian Gulf War shots of Kuwait's burning oil fields, burning-of-the-dead ceremonies on the Ganges, refuse dumps of Calcutta, Auschwitz, Egyptian Pyramids, Angkor Wat, Mount Everest, Tuol Sleng in Cambodia, Indonesian factory workers."

On one hands there's maddening city crowds, sweat shops, multi level slums....and graves juxtaposed against chicken hatcheries and then there are peaceful faces of monks and tribals. Certainly makes you question the purpose of your own existance.

Makes me wanna go back to being a tribal for sure

Why I dont go back to being a tribal...

This is a question asked to me often.

So here is the reply

“ BACK!!!! What do you mean back? Where do you think I came from?”

(Here I am being totally defensive about the fat that my birth certificate reads my place of birth as Pasthal-Tarapur which happens to be the gram panchayat with largest tribal population in the most tribal tehsil, (Palghar) in Maharashtra)

The only problem I have is with the grass skirts.

I just cannot take the fact that my clothing is my goats food, which itself is my food in the first place.

I mean imagine, here you are nicely ironing your deep green grass skirt. You turn around to the closet to look for a matching tie and GRUB GRUB, your pet’s eaten half your attire.

Also, they don’t have any pockets. I mean, where would I keep my mobile phone and wallet and bike keys?

What good is a Zingalala Bantu without his MMS enabled GPRS phone and internationally accepted payable in Dollars credit card?” Me says….