The King's Speech

My wife S is an avid Colin Firth fan and has tried to catch up on his movies as often as she can. I am an avid history buff, especially interested in the era spanning the end of the First World War up until the start of the Nixon era.

So when these two interests intersected in The King's Speech, we wanted to go and watch the movie. And boy, were we glad we watched it.

Firth aced the titular role, but Geoffrey Rush in a delightful turn as speech therapist Lionel Logue is the scene-stealer. After Slumdog Millionaire in 2009, we were glad we did not miss out on a movie that went on to capture Oscars glory. Beyond the usual uplifting elements of the story, it is the warmth of the characterization that seems to be the difference.

The King's Speech

Colin Firth, interviewed by David Mermelstein of the Wall Street Journal, about the role he played in The King's Speech:

"My profession can so often be completely frivolous, which is one of its virtues. But whenever I play someone who suffers, I feel that there's a danger that I'm an impostor. So it's a relief that people who stammer haven't felt misrepresented. The reason why people tell stories and read stories and see films is to feel less alone. And if there's a story that takes everyone through something like this, it's a way to say to others, 'Now you live through it and see how it feels.' And if my profession gets that wrong, we've lost that opportunity. So it's a great relief not to have dropped the ball.''

J loves all things Colin Firth, and I have promised to take her to see the movie, and the above quote makes me want to see it even more. Even if it figures to be drama at the highest level.

Jai Ho!

Ella pugazhum iraivanukkae. God is great.

These simple words summed up the Academy Award acceptance speech by the Mozart of Madras, AR Rahman, after picking up the award for Best Original Score for his racy, elegant and beautiful score for Slumdog Millionaire.

And this after paying tribute to his mother (to quote...I have nothing else, but I have my mother with me...end quote).

And I sat there thinking, if this guy were to win for one of his two songs nominated for Best Original Song, he is not going to be able to top that speech I'd just heard.

Boy, was I wrong!

This overanalyzed and yet often misunderstood genius doing his work from the oddly named Pachathan Record Inn in Chennai, turned up trumps again.

He summarized and succintly said what needs to be the mantra for everyone every day of their life..."the essence...is about optimism and the power of hope in our lives." And the exquisitely worded nod to love...as a choice as opposed to hate..."all my life, I had a choice of hate and love, and I chose love, and I am here. God bless!"

And finally...

The Philadelphia Story

Superb star cast - Katharine Hepburn, Jimmy Stewart & Cary Grant.

Fantastic story about human prejudices and frailties and ultimately about that ultimate human tendency - the ability to forgive and accept.

But these two are never enough to make a good movie. What you need is fantastic writing - the script for this movie is sizzling. The dialog is sensational. And that superb cast mentioned above - well, it seems the lived and breathed the roles when the movie was made. Such sincere and earnest are their portrayals.

The superb dialog - "I am standing here solidly on my own two hands and going crazy!". "What's this room? I've forgotten my compass. I'd say south-by-southwest parlor-by-living room"
"You'll never be a first class human being or a first class woman until you've learned to have some regard for human frailty."

Ah! Such exquisite timing in comedy and such flowery prose in drama.

What else to say except, go, watch it. On cable on Turner Classic Movies. Or from Netflix or Blockbuster. Or if you are lucky, your local library.

Thank You For Smoking

Spin. Spin-doctoring. How you want to call it, whatever you want to make of it, the one thing that is constant in this day of instant media and instant news, is spin. Not the facts, not the news, but the interpretation of what that means to you and me, the ordinary joe. And not the interpretation that we choose for ourselves, but rather the interpretation of the news given to us, rather thrust down our throats by the so-called media and Government.

Granted, it has been proven beyond doubt that smoking is harmful to health (and no, don't even bother trying to convince me otherwise). Granted, the harmful effects of smoking need to be taught to people so that they can make informed choices. But is that the reality? Nope. Instead, we have pseudo advertising in movies and such that portray smoking as a cool activity that screen heroes do. Ergo, it must be a cool thing for teens and kids to do.

What we have is a total abdication of personal responsibility by parents and actually everyone around. Until we as individuals can stake and claim the responsibility for our own lives, no matter what happens around us, we are going to be stuck in this vicious cycle. Till we wake up, well....Thank you for smoking!!!

Summer of movies

Wifey and I both love to watch good movies. We both get bugged with typical run-of-the-mill movies (read: most desi movies). So while Netflix and public libraries contribute to satisfying the thirst to watch good movies, there is still the occasional indulgence towards typical summer blockbusters. So far, we're two into the summer movie season. Pirates of the Carribean - At World's End, and Ocean's 13.

Loved Pirates. Loved being able to loudly guffaw in the theaters. (Side note: Only Ocean's 11, Ice Age, and Pirates of the Carribean - Curse of the Black Pearl have provided for totally, utterly, and completely satisfying movie-going experiences. These three movies were a perfect synergy of disparate sources of joy - all coming together at the right place at the right time.). Granted that both movies sorta-kinda-desparately tried to live up to the glib-tongued smart-a** feel of their original versions, they were still good in their own merit. Weirdly enough, we've missed the third installment of two other successful movie franchises of the recent decade - Spiderman, and Shrek. And even more weird, we don't even care we have missed it. I guess you can only flog a dead horse ever so much.

Oh well...I am working up the reasons to convince her to go with me to see Ratatouille from Disney-Pixar, and maybe she won't need nudging to see HP-OotP.

Netflix is providing the nature-fix through the Planet Earth series from BBC/Discovery. Thankfully, they are shipping the Sir David Attenborough narrated version. No offense to Sigourney Weaver (she did a very excellent job in another amazing documentary - Why Dogs Smile and Chimpanzees Cry), but in Planet Earth, her narrative is, to say the least, awful. Well, maybe the reality is that I am biased towards Sir David Attenborough's clear, concise and involved narrative. Maybe it is watching series after series of Sir Attenborough's works including Life of Birds, Life of Mammals, Blue Planet - Seas of Life etc. Maybe it is also the knowledge that he is actually a field guy (an expert even) in wild-life reporting. Whatever it maybe, watching Planet Earth seems that much more complete with his narrative.

You can experience the difference for yourself here in the US - watch Planet Earth Wednesday nights on Animal Planet, and then get your hands on the Attenborough-narrated DVDs selling through retailers or available to rent at your neighborhood or internet video store.

Next up on the 2-do-list - classics and yesteryear black & white features...afterall, "our" movie is one such b&w classic - the evergreen (or should it be ever-black-and-white???) "The Shop Around The Corner".

"Looking For Comedy In the Muslim World"

Diversity. In language. Mannerism. In speech. In contexts. Its everywhere. So it should be no surprise that people have a hard time understanding each others' idiosyncracies. Be it at the individual or family or ethno-religious or national context. A lot of times, we seem to be at logger heads. Being the curious people that we are, we want to try and understand the other.

And when we fall flat and fail to understand, it is because of one and only one reason - the effort was not honestly unbiased.

Looking For Comedy..the film, is the story of one such attempt by the American Administration to understand what causes the Muslims to laugh. Tragically, they use the means of a Hollywood comic, Albert Brooks to achieve their results, and well, the result is a comedy of errors, culture shock, and misunderstandings bordering on the comic. What is perceived as a job well done by the Brooks' character is actually a botched job that may have resulted in precipitating the already tenous relationship between India and Pakistan. (Talk about difference in perceptions).

What this movie so adeptly underscores is that, despite best efforts to actually try and genuinely understand something, when we go into an initiative inadequately prepared, the result is inevitable catastrophe. Especially when the funny guy sent in by the government has had no prior exposure to the cultural subcontexts of the places that he is supposedly scouting.

Two poignant scenes that underscore the theme of the movie happen within minutes of each other...first, the State Department cohort sent with the comic asks the comic's secretary to tell him to "break a leg". Her response..."Oh please. Thats rude." The second is when, the comic has tried in vain to get the audience to respond to some of his stand-up jokes, he asks in jest as to how many in the audience knows and understands English. And much to his chagrin, the entire audience lifts their hands up.

Two vastly different experiences - one at an individual level and another at a group level that has the same symptoms of the vastly under-rated problem - the problem of understanding and appreciating multi-culturalism. When an effort is made to understand a different culture through the same lens as we view ours, the result is a grotesque misrepresentation of the glorious concept of cultural diversity.

Looking for Comedy is a fantastic indie that atleast has the guts to hint at our seeming inability to understand diversity on its own merits.

"You think you know who you are?"

...
"You've absolutely no idea" (from the thought-provoking movie Crash)

Have you thought lately on how prejudiced you are or can be? Especially when it concerns the matter of another race of people? Or even when it just concerns the matter of people that "look" differently than you do?

We've made our own lives so complex, so profoundly shallow, so irresponsibly ego-centric, we may have just forgotten what it means to be a person. We can argue about morals, morality, right, righteousness, God, etc till the cows come home. But until that time comes, when fraught with danger and faced with hurdles we stop resorting to racial slurs and epithets against any one or more perceived communities, we maybe all are doing a Jim Crow, albeit to every discriminated race.

And economic progress and how long a country has been free has apparently nothing to do with it either. India has been and still continues to be victim of its own prejudices; Australia, France, Britain, Germany and the US also boast an ignominous record. Yes, statistically the developed nations maybe have a leg up on the rest of the world, but the fact still remains - almost everywhere is a prejudiced society. Many places, we've managed to hide it under a veneer of sophistication that passes off as tolerance and acceptance.

I am not sure where we can start to unlearn the prejudices that we've learnt, but I suppose, by accident or by design, we have begun moving along that path of accepting diversity, because we're atleast acknowledging that there are problems. And the new economic realities also seem to be spurring this acceptance along.

To quote documentary film-maker Bill Brummel's words - "Imagine we are all the same. Imagine we agree about politics, religion and morality. Imagine we like the same types of music, art, food and coffee. Imagine we all look alike. Sound boring? Differences need not divide us. Embrace diversity. Dignity is everyone's human right." (Starbucks' The Way I See It #61)

Murder on the Orient Express...

Hercule Poirot...that French-accented English speaking Belgian detective...Agatha Christie...that wonderful weaver of mystery yarn....aah...the joy of reading the books.

Spoiler alert: Note, if you have not yet read the book "Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie" or watched the movie of same name starring Albert Finney as Poirot, I suggest you get off this posting immediately....don't tell me later that I didn't warn you.

Perhaps one of the finest mystery/crime detective novels ever written, this is a story of kidnapping for ransom, murder, and an eventually elaborate and protracted plot for revenge.

Set aboard the surreal-sounding "Orient Express", that trans-European train of luxury and wealth, it is begins rather simply with Monsieur Poirot on his way back to London to tend to a pending case...little does he realize that he is going to be close in hand as a horrific murder is perpetrated on one of the travelers, just as the train is held up by a heavy wall of drifting snow in 'Jugo Slavia' (emphasis mine).

That begins the story of Poirot's genius as he uses his wiliness and cleverness, and unabashedly come to the rather astounding conclusion (well, when I read the book the first time, and watched the movie the first time, it was astounding in the scope and depth of the plot and the scheming and planning that went into making all the things fall into place at the same time and place....a train in a desolate and freezing rural area of Jugoslavia.) as he (Poirot, of course) puts to use the little gray cells in his brain and lies down in his chair and solves the murder.

Without divulging too much, it has to be said though that the case of a certain Daisy Armstrong and her family is centerpiece to the whole case.

It is indeed appreciable that Agatha Christie even conjured up this mystery, and it is that much more appreciable that she came up with a detective who would, how shall we say....crack the case open just by using the gray matter. And her characterization of the people involved in the case....ah...sheer genius.

As an aside..it has been said that it takes a crook to nab a crook....and Poirot gets to the bottom of the murder mystery by just analyzing clues at the scene of crime and with a few interviews. So does that make Poirot a good criminal mastermind? And what of Agatha Christie? Yes, she is the author, but she did conjure up the plot in the first place and then wrote a book that was essentially how to solve it...Perhaps, she is a great criminal mastermind herself :P

Self Pity

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself
A bird will fall frozen-dead from a bough without ever feeling sorry for itself

Self Pity

A poem by D.H.Lawrence

And a poignant piece in that women-power movie G.I.Jane

A Season of Faith's Perfection..

A Season of Faith's Perfection...a wonderful title to an article in a wonderful movie - Finding Forrester. So why is it stuck in my mind like an impression etched on the rocky sides of the Grand Canyon by the raging torrents of the Colorado River.

If you have not watched that movie, find some time to go rent the video and watch the movie. I promise you, it is going to get on your nerves initially, probably even bore you. But I will also promise you, from the bottom of my heart, that it is worth your while to sit and watch the entire movie in one sitting.

Endearing in its own way, the movie taught me the concept of soup questions. As Sean Connery's William Forrester so eloquently puts it, the object of a question is to elicit information that matters to the person asking and no one else. So the next time I pop a question whose answer is irrelevant to me, you can rap me on my head and say, thats not exactly a soup question is it :)

More important though to me is the depiction of friendship between two of the rather strangest people - one an aspiring writer who would rather keep his talent under wraps rather than risk being not "cool" with his crowd, the other, a decorated (once, exactly) writer who stopped writing because of some personal tragedy and now lives coccooned in his apartment.

A Season of Faith's Perfection...the movie, to me, is the season, where there is perfection in the faith of friendship. Being the sentimental mush-prone geek that I am, I fell hook-line-sinker for the mush. But wait, thats not necassarily what this movie is all about. It is about sagely advise from a sage to a young kid....

"The key to a woman's heart is an unexpected gift at an unexpected time"

"The first key to writing..is to write, not to think"

"You write your first draft with your heart..you rewrite with your head"

Sentimental mush aside, this movie reinforces the concept of how first impressions are not always correct...and how friends and friendship can never grow old or tired

Have a wonderful time....