...and the Nobel Peace Prize '09 goes to

Barack Hussein Obama "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples".

Isn't it ironic that someone who declares war on a country to be necessary, and allocates troops to continue that war should receive any 'peace prize', least of all the Nobel Peace Prize in less than a fortnight of that allocation of troops.

I try to stay away from politics. I'm not informed enough perhaps, nor qualified enough. But I had to put this down here, lest I forget how grave tragedies can often be so very comic.

Funny thing I saw today

This is an ad for Abercrombie & Fitch.

Yes, a prepped up plastic pretty boy with impeccable hair is indeed the epitome of 'fierce'. (I'd have used the noun form, but it's 'fierceness', and sounds rather lame. English does need to be revamped!)

Oh, and Arthur Conan Doyle, seriously? Somebody really got paid for this ad!

Even olde english can carry trash only so far!

Generation gaps

In a world that's forever changing, what are the chances you find someone with who you can spend the rest of your life together?

I see my mom and dad and I wonder, almost 30 years of being together through plenty of hardships right from financial instability to moving base to bringing up two brats; and to think that theirs was an arranged marriage wherein they did not even know one another. At least not well enough in my terms to get into a lifetime of committment. They met I think just once before their marriage!

And now that I am old enough to appreciate the differences in temper and character, I know that it must have taken more than just the bond of marital status to hold them together as they are held maybe this is just one more form of love that we, the young and the restless, in our haste refuse to acknowledge or appreciate. I would give up a lot to be the way my mom and dad are right now -- happy, and at peace.

The jump in generations is actually a rather queer thing. Perhaps it is the difference in outlook and perception, perhaps it is the difference in exposure and expectations from life, perhaps it is something different.

Mmm...Shiny!

I watched X-Men Origins - Wolverine on sunday...(take that Betty) and it was better than I had expected it to be after the debacle The Last Stand was.

It's a prequel to the X-Men trilogy, and while there are a few lapses/differences when compared to the original comic, its good. Liev Scheiber as Sabretooth is particularly good. Lynn Collins is almost ethereal. The movie is however essentially, and justifiably dominated by Hugh Jackman. It is sort of amazing, as well as a tad disconcerting how he has refined the character of Wolverine from its comic origins. It is indeed difficult to think of anyone else performing that role.

And now for a very personal opinion; I thought Gambit stole the show everytime he was present in the frame. I guess it has to do with the fact that I like Gambit as a character in the comic than I like wolverine, and that the character in the movie had an amazing aura of grace about it. Again, it is a very very personal opinion, but I will stick to it.

If you have not seen this movie yet, go see it. Here's a preview for you.

a rather despirited show

THE SPIRIT



I love action comics...I love Wolverine, Storm, Batman, Green Arrow, Catwoman, Cyclops, Hulk, Thor, Saturn, Elektra, Gambit...and I could go on and on and on. I had loved Sin City and 300. So when the promos for 'The Spirit' started showing with Eva Mendes and Paz Vega scorching the screen, I could barely wait to watch it.

I should have stuck to the promos!

The movie is a visual feast. The actors Gabriel Macht, Eva Mendes, Paz Vega, Jamie Fox, Scarlet Johanassen, Sarah Paulson and Samuel L. Jackson are all good actors, some of course better then the rest. And this brilliant cast and fantastic graphics makes the bad direction and screenplay even more appalling!

First things first...the dark edgy Frank Miller graphic novel visual style DOES NOT go with the general camo tone of the film. Secondly, nobody wants to watch a camp superhero movie! And finally...and the worst of all; you CANNOT change the character of a super villain and make him look worse than a comic strip clown in the name of "...oppurtunity to be larger than life...". The Octopus is larger than life and making him period costumes will not change things for the better.

Why is it so difficult for people to leave the good things be? A menacing villain identified only by his gloves; whose face has never been seen versus a black man behaving like a queen who can't dress. Frank Miller is a briliant director...but he should stick to what he's good at -- edgy, adrenaline stashed movies.

Anyhow, now for the good things in the movie...Eva Mendes is the ultimate femme fatale. But then again, she's always that. She's the only woman I've seen on screen who can carry off orange lip tinge with panache! Paz Vega; very good and very underrated, is stunning as Plaster of Paris. Jamie King is alluring as Lorelaine - the angel of death. Scarlett Johansson and Sarah Paulson are prim, pretty and seductive. Samuel L. Jackson is wasted in a role that did not need him. And finally, Gabriel Macht, did look the best I've seen in any of his pics online. He should keep the dark hair look.

I am no great movie critic, and I am perhaps out of my depth here...but it's a very basic flaw in the entire show -- the director wanted to cram in too many things. He wanted the original camp humour of the comic series, he wanted the dark look of Sin City, he wanted a brilliant star cast, and he wanted to touch up the whole thing with his 'vision' of 'larger than life' costumes signifying the 'samurai, nazi, russian, and blaxploitation' movies.

Aaaarrrgh! It's a comic strip movie. Just keep it simple!!!

Love, sex and intimacy

I had been a naive child. I had found out the details about sex much later than the rest of classmates had. This was partly due to the fact that I was a prudish no-nonsense sort of a child.

But things change, thankfully!

Anyhow, this is not a post about innocence lost, nor is this post about my escapades. (It amazing what feats one can perform with the correct choice of words!)

I was thinking of the general perception I have noticed amongst my friends and aquaintances pertaining to love, and sex. Its also a cross-cultural thing I guess. One important factor in this was that I'd recently read 'It Does Not Die' by Maitreyi Devi in its original bengali version 'Na Hanyate'. It is by far one of the best books I have read in any genre, in any language. Perhaps I will have audacity to review it here someday, but for now let's suffice it to say this book touched me in a way nothing had touched me in a long time.

This book told me what we have known since a while,which, very flatly put, will boil down to that the western perception of love is markedly different from the indian outlook towards it. The western concept of love ( as it appears to me) has a certain rigid structure to it, there's always the initial romance, persuasion and a final culmination in the physical expression of it. There's no doubt that I am indeed making a rash generalization of it, but if you should notice, all love stories in the western tradition need even a symbolic gesture of the physical for it to be complete.

Surprisingly, the indian perception seems to me to be more flexible; even liberal if you will. There are no guidelines as to how things should proceed and how they must culminate. The spiritual almost essentially overshadows the carnal here and any physical expression seems only to mar the concept of love.

All said and done, its still funny how the focus seems to be upon definitions and notions of how things should be and not on how things are. How can the definition of love be generic when the concept of it remains based on the intimacy of feelings of one, two or more persons?

I mention more options than two simply because I refuse to believe that intimacy must exist only between more than one and less than three. Who can claim for certain that the saga of Narcissus was a wretched tragedy and not the ultimate romance? Who is to say all menage-a-trois lack love or intimacy? Why must every Columbine need a Harlequin so she may dance? Why must the saga of Chitrangada need Arjun to be immortal?

If you had to choose between the sparks of a moments intimacy and lifelong insipid romance, what choice shall you make?

When we are growing up, we all have best friends...someone we share everything with, someone who we think will always be there, forever. when does it all change?

The Bubble Reputation

It's been a long while again...but then it's not so bad after all.

I am reading this book called The Bubble Reputation now, and it's by an american writer called Cathie Pelletier.

Well, I'll be very honest and say that I had completely given up on contemporary american writers, and then I started reading this book. And it made me smile after a long long time...not a laughter of sarcasm...not a faint smile of admiration at some clever phrase or some obscure but beautiful word...just plain old genuine good humoured laughter...something I never thought anyone but Wodehouse would be able to manage.

Someone should make a movie out of it...it definitely has a 'Midsummer' insanity attached to the whole book...and then there are all these cats named Ralph, and Mugs, and Winston...absolutely breathtaking, and breathtakingly beautiful.

There's still some hope left in the world after all!

random thoughts..

love

passion

relationship

obsession

crush

infatuation

craze

life

career

happiness

satisfaction

complacency

peace

freedom

bliss

habits

hobbies

pastimes

leisure

journeys

sojourns

sex

seduction

fun

humour

sarcasm

laughter

smiles

tears

torrents

tempests

movies

theatre

melodrama

pathos

violin

salsa

tea

e-books

honey

pooh-bear

batman

catwoman

friends

friends

friends

friends

friends

friends

friends

friends

friends

.

.

.