To hell with micro-blogging! Right when you need it, the site won’t work!
Sigh! Well, if your day starts by trampling a poor cockroach mercilessly, you know it is not going to be your day. The sin will follow you wherever you go! And it did!
It started with this. My brother leaves early in the day, and when I wake up, it is only these cockroaches or ants that give me company. (No, no, don’t even think that this is coz I keep the house dirty, ours in on the ground floor, and so, even Hit and Baygon have become ineffective to their innovative ways of finding a place into the house). After hearing a sound like ‘htttt’, I half-yawning moved my foot aside to see that it was the exoskeleton of a cockroach that I had very effectively broken, and therefore killed. After paying my last respects to the poor creature by throwing it away for good, I proceeded to the wash basin to brush my teeth, when another sound caught my attention. This time it seemed to come from the kitchen where the water can is usually kept. Though my eye sight is poor, I could figure out that the water in the can has been disturbed and the can itself was swinging this way and that, as if it has been something had pushed it. I wore my specs to investigate the incident. Ok, I’m no Madam Marple or Nancy Drew, but I can surely figure out any rat’s or cat’s tail, if it had been hiding somewhere after mischievously playing with the water can. But nope, nothing there!
Some thoughts about the recent Paranormal activity, and other horror movies did come to my mind, but then, when I thought of my steely teeth, confidence did a hulu dance and proceeded to encourage me. After about one hour I reached the bus-stand to find no M1s in sight. That was the only bus that ensured a no-sandwich-or-burger smashing, squeezing journey till Velechery. The hulu dance being forgotten, I couldn’t even think of the word confidence then. Mustering all the courage I could at that time, I stepped foot onto the M70 that was in sight. Oops… then I saw it was another lady’s foot that I had stepped on, and quickly apologized to stop the steady flow of expletives that were raining from her red-stained mouth. So much for my confidence’s hulu dance! Sigh!
Like they say, there is light at the end of a tunnel, a seat in the crowded bus emptied up for me, and I taking it as an opportunity to breathe, happily lunged into it. The day did seem to be getting better. I guess in so much I had somehow washed myself off the sin of killing a poor bubbly flying cockroach. So smiling to myself, I was about to forget all worries, when this stupid man caught my eye. After about 10 mins, it was evident he was surely not smirking to himself and the obscene gestures were directed at me. In this world, there is nothing as irritating and annoying as something that is done to you indirectly. You can’t even fight back or shout or react in any possible way, lest you be called an idiot for imagining things. For that stupid smirk of his, I felt like baring my steel reinforced teeth at him, which I was sure, would make him the twin brother of the scarecrow that you see in the Thanjavur rice fields. But my dignity and the care for my fellow-travellers made me change my mind. Also my stop was near. I had by then decided to take my silent revenge on Mr.Smirking-Beauty by stamping his feet when I was getting down. Imagine my chagrin when he grinned at me, and got down on the stop that was just before the one where I get down. I felt like chasing him right then, and trampling his feet like I had done the poor cockroach! Ahh… now I knew why my day had begun on such a great note!
So sighing I entered my office to find the same boring tasks staring out of my mailbox like some demented dragons keen on making me lose my already half-insane mind. End of day was nearing, after a wearisome boring day. Only the onsite call was remaining which we had calculated to last exactly 18 mins and 23 secs. But damn all sanity, we had to hear a whole lecture on an already known issue for a whole hour with bits if Telugu in between! Mr. Cockroach was flying around my head in circles reminding me of the sin I had committed early morning! So much for ghosts! :|
If my day could’ve ended better the internal site where I had to upload some documents refused to oblige, making me raise tickets, only to suddenly start working so promptly that the documents got uploaded twice. How nice! And then there was this traffic that snailed all the way home, creating an opportunity for me to scare the driver with my loud yawns. (He was lucky I don’t snore!)
And so after a whole tiring day when I have to eat dinner cooked by myself (What worse misery can strike you! :’( ), I tried to tweet something, only to find the site not-responding at all. Now you know the reason for this mindless rant. Well, I can only hope that I paid for all my sins!
Hmm..now where did I leave my mobile phone.. (Author scratching her head, looking for some bulb to glow, and show her the quickest path to her mobile phone). OMG! How did a cockroach’s leg find its way to my head!!!! :|
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Avatar - Some thoughts!
Avatar is no new release, I know. But well, I got the tickets to watch that very recently and so here are some of my views on it. This might be a very very late review (if you can call it so), but I felt like writing about it.. so here goes. :)
Just when you thought that the greatest movies were those with the most complicated scripts, or story lines with layers and layers behind each frame, here is one to trash all that!
You go in there expecting grandeur, but what hits you is simplicity! It is not a wonderfully fresh story line, or refreshingly brilliant characters, it is the sincere and simple narrative. Everything is simply put there, point blank for all. But very few always get it, so instead of the usual narrative; James Cameron uses 3D, to make you feel one with an imaginary world, in parallel with the one we are already living in. He uses a new species The Na’vis. And unfolds a brand new Avatar of cinema!
All this while, we expected twists and turns, something spectacular that made those bucks you spend in the cinema hall worthwhile. In Avatar, except for the new technology that has been used to make the film, for a layman it is as lucid as it is for a 4-yr old. Good vs Bad, where the Good ultimately wins.
Here we also get to see how things work when there are a bunch of individuals who work for themselves, for their own motives. How their interests take precedence over everything, over lives, over peace, over The Right!! There is an irony that is brought out, when the tiny humans try to overcome the giant Na’vis, using the machines and technology that is far too superior and powerful for the native people of Pandora. How arrogance and greed overcome us humans, how we get blinded for our s
selfish motives!
But as in any film, there are a few things that linger unexplained. Why this perfection in everything in the Pandora? Pandora.. the name itself seems ironical. The people, if they were meant to be of another world, are more like us. The same two eyes, one nose and one mouth. I forgot the two ears! :P
Why is the stretch of imagination never going beyond that part of it? I’ve been waiting to watch a movie that depicts aliens in a different way, but somehow, they always get to what we have already seen or experienced. Speaking in the physical terms, of course.
Coming back, really, why the perfection? The Navis have perfect bodies, the old, the children everyone! Living in harmony with nature makes you perfect!? Is that what James Cameron wants us to believe? Even in the tribes there are fat people. But nope not here! Now that was one thing that made me wonder, what message this is actually sending out. But there is good, bad and ugly in Pandora. The dog-kind-of hunters that almost hunt Jake Sully, predators, herbivores that are almost equivalent to goats, monkey-like creatures. But there were exceptions. The lizard like creature that flies with its own wings that spread out like a spiral fan, the spiral plants that withdraw into themselves when they are threatened. The luminescent forest itself. It has taken many a creative mind to come up with all these things!!!
There is a never-say-die villain here. He is the right match for our ‘It is not over until it is over’ hero of course. But is it right to call him the Hero? Doesn’t Neytiri actually save him twice? Isn’t she the one who has the real guts to go against her own people for an outsider?
There is a deviation though. The money-guy who never understands any other language other than money, is for a change right on the site of action. He is along with the people who are working for him. Quite odd! Coz usually u find these guys teeing off with a Bluetooth on. Maybe that is the reason, Bluetooth doesn’t work across planets.(I know that was a really bad one.. sorry couldn’t help :P)
The indigenous communication devices, technology that brings images in thin air, (though falls short of providing an automatic wheelchair for Jake Sully) could make you scratch your head. But again you are diverted from these by the magnificence of the world. The hanging mountains is one such. Every frame in the movie is significant, and you’ll know that each creature has a role to play in the end by the time you are 15 minutes into the movie. They surely can’t waste their time sketching and creating such creatures just for a 1 minute scene! And sure enough you get to see all of them in the end doing justice to their part, pulling at your heartstrings right when you could let your mind wander about.
Good against evil. Acceptance vs alienation. Man vs woman. Nature vs humans. Navi’s vs humans. In the end you learn love triumphs. Love for everything around you. Even the smallest dandelion seed (fluffy things in the air, whatever they actually are), even the tiniest blade of grass, loves you. If you love it back, you win! Seems absurd doesn’t it? :) Well, that is the toughest thing James Cameron tries to convey. Very few take it back along with them though. The message could get overshadowed by the expectation for special effects and 3D, cinema like never before experience.
Just when you thought that the greatest movies were those with the most complicated scripts, or story lines with layers and layers behind each frame, here is one to trash all that!
You go in there expecting grandeur, but what hits you is simplicity! It is not a wonderfully fresh story line, or refreshingly brilliant characters, it is the sincere and simple narrative. Everything is simply put there, point blank for all. But very few always get it, so instead of the usual narrative; James Cameron uses 3D, to make you feel one with an imaginary world, in parallel with the one we are already living in. He uses a new species The Na’vis. And unfolds a brand new Avatar of cinema!
All this while, we expected twists and turns, something spectacular that made those bucks you spend in the cinema hall worthwhile. In Avatar, except for the new technology that has been used to make the film, for a layman it is as lucid as it is for a 4-yr old. Good vs Bad, where the Good ultimately wins.
Here we also get to see how things work when there are a bunch of individuals who work for themselves, for their own motives. How their interests take precedence over everything, over lives, over peace, over The Right!! There is an irony that is brought out, when the tiny humans try to overcome the giant Na’vis, using the machines and technology that is far too superior and powerful for the native people of Pandora. How arrogance and greed overcome us humans, how we get blinded for our s
selfish motives!
But as in any film, there are a few things that linger unexplained. Why this perfection in everything in the Pandora? Pandora.. the name itself seems ironical. The people, if they were meant to be of another world, are more like us. The same two eyes, one nose and one mouth. I forgot the two ears! :P
Why is the stretch of imagination never going beyond that part of it? I’ve been waiting to watch a movie that depicts aliens in a different way, but somehow, they always get to what we have already seen or experienced. Speaking in the physical terms, of course.
Coming back, really, why the perfection? The Navis have perfect bodies, the old, the children everyone! Living in harmony with nature makes you perfect!? Is that what James Cameron wants us to believe? Even in the tribes there are fat people. But nope not here! Now that was one thing that made me wonder, what message this is actually sending out. But there is good, bad and ugly in Pandora. The dog-kind-of hunters that almost hunt Jake Sully, predators, herbivores that are almost equivalent to goats, monkey-like creatures. But there were exceptions. The lizard like creature that flies with its own wings that spread out like a spiral fan, the spiral plants that withdraw into themselves when they are threatened. The luminescent forest itself. It has taken many a creative mind to come up with all these things!!!
There is a never-say-die villain here. He is the right match for our ‘It is not over until it is over’ hero of course. But is it right to call him the Hero? Doesn’t Neytiri actually save him twice? Isn’t she the one who has the real guts to go against her own people for an outsider?
There is a deviation though. The money-guy who never understands any other language other than money, is for a change right on the site of action. He is along with the people who are working for him. Quite odd! Coz usually u find these guys teeing off with a Bluetooth on. Maybe that is the reason, Bluetooth doesn’t work across planets.(I know that was a really bad one.. sorry couldn’t help :P)
The indigenous communication devices, technology that brings images in thin air, (though falls short of providing an automatic wheelchair for Jake Sully) could make you scratch your head. But again you are diverted from these by the magnificence of the world. The hanging mountains is one such. Every frame in the movie is significant, and you’ll know that each creature has a role to play in the end by the time you are 15 minutes into the movie. They surely can’t waste their time sketching and creating such creatures just for a 1 minute scene! And sure enough you get to see all of them in the end doing justice to their part, pulling at your heartstrings right when you could let your mind wander about.
Good against evil. Acceptance vs alienation. Man vs woman. Nature vs humans. Navi’s vs humans. In the end you learn love triumphs. Love for everything around you. Even the smallest dandelion seed (fluffy things in the air, whatever they actually are), even the tiniest blade of grass, loves you. If you love it back, you win! Seems absurd doesn’t it? :) Well, that is the toughest thing James Cameron tries to convey. Very few take it back along with them though. The message could get overshadowed by the expectation for special effects and 3D, cinema like never before experience.
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