Spin

Spin spin spin
Spin spin till you drop
Spin spin spin
Spin spin lest they stop
The world spinning below you
Or the sky standing still
You're spinning in your head, you say?
Tell them... if you will.

Naysayers... each one of them
They'll bind you down, you'll see
They'll shackle you
And hold you down
With one hand
waving free.

Your thoughts
They'll spin around you
To places you shouldn't go
All your questions
They'll surround you
Tell you things
You shouldn't know.

And you'll spin spin spin
Spin spin till you drop...
Spin spin spin
Spin spin because you can't stop.

Vertigo

We swung
Crazy
Between extremes
Torrid high
Despondent low
And in between
There lay a why
The answer to which
We couldn't know
Along the edges
Of it's steep ascent
We rose unfettered
Our shackled wills
Were innocence
Wrapped in a hurricane
Driving us forth
Holding us still
And we swung
Crazy
Between extremes
Torrid high
Despondent low
Hopelessly distant
Scaldingly close
Have we been neither
Or have we been both?...

...

You soak me through
Still leave me dry
Shatter my defenses
Steal my alibis
Hold me down
To cut me loose
Bind me and leave me
Free to choose
You fill me up
And leave me hollow
I cut loose and run
You follow.

Ishqiya

   One word... sesky. If you know what sesky means... you'll like the movie. If you don't... you probably won't.
 

I found it kinda Tarantinoesque... but that's probably just me. The dialogues are laced with expletives and phallic references... Vidya Balan sings hindustani, cusses like a hitman from UP( Not tat I know any hitmen from UP) and gets two small time goons to help her kidnap a man. Fantastic role. Really. And fantastic Vidya. If you don't get the jokes you can still watch it for her. Then there's  Naseeruddin Shah, if anyone could pull off the role of aging crook falling madly in love without making it maudlin or slapstick or plain nonsensical it's Naseeruddin Shah... he was the old-world charm dimension to the film routinely lapsing into fantasies of Vidya in very very 60s settings... and Arshad Warsi plays horny uh amoral? thug very convincingly. Underneath the horniness and the lack of morals... he wasn't all that bad. Sorta like a knight in denial... but not quite. Besides everyone in the movie was gray at best... no good guys in white hats and bad guys in black here... but then that's how it goes in life as well anyway. One o my fav characters in the movie though was Naseeruddin Shah's sister... well, she doesn't really come on screen, she's mostly a part o the film through phone conversations, but this is what she sez to her husband "...Woh(Shah) aapke gunhegaar hain... par mere bhaijaan bhi hain... aur rakhi agle mahine hain. Ho sake to unhe chod dijiye... nahin to maar dijiye... faisla aapka"... which loosely translated means... "he has commited a crime, but he's my brother and rakhi's only next month... so let him go if you can. If you can't, go ahead shoot him. Its all cool" and this when the husband is holding a gun to Naseeruddin Shah's head... all said in a tone that sez ' I am having my hands manicured, I have a K-serial to watch next, don bore me with trivial issues'... like I said... there's a lot in the dialogues. So if you don understand what Arshad Warsi is all about when he says "Toh aapka ishq, ishq hain, aur hamara issex?"... don watch this film... but if you do... definitely definitely sesky.

The Bicycle Thief

Watched Vittorio de Sica's 'The Bicycle Thief' today and I think its one of the best, most touching, most well-made films I've ever watched...

The story, set in post World War II Rome, centres around two days in the life of a man named Anotnio.  It begins with him getting a job and realizing they won't hire him without his bicycle... and when he finally gets it, it gets stolen. Antonio then ,with his son Bruno and a friend, sets out to find the bicycle thief...

I loved the way each tiny detail was captured in this film... nothing missed and not a single thing too blatantly expressed. Whether Antonio was treating his son to a meal they couldn't afford... or cornered in an alley trying to fight off a mob of men angry at one of them being accused of stealing the bicycle... he is heartbreakingly real. And you wish with him for his job to be saved... for his bicycle to be found...

My favourite character though is Bruno. He takes the cake for being the perfect boy... endearingly following his father around, examining each cycle bell, each tyre to see if it could've been part of theirs. Preparing to pee on a wall in the middle of a chase :)... Shutting a window before leaving home to protect his baby sister... and trying and tripping and tripping and still trying to keep up with a grown man's long strides...Bruno...is absolutely adorable :)

I couldn't help but love the characters... I couldn't but be absolutely involved... Everything a film should be... this film was.

Loved it.

The things we take for granted...

I was waiting in an auto at the traffic signal near bhashyam circle, and one of those lil children that beg there came up and started asking me for money. I had a five star bar in my bag and I handed it to him... I thought he'd move to the next person on the street, but he jus stood there grinning from ear to ear till the signal turned green... I wish I'd had more five star bars...

Keep going... You'll get somewhere...