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...

The 'Yesterday' Syndrome

Life is a continuum... at least that's how its meant to be. But occasionally we get stuck at random phases in our lives, moments we loved being in so much that we can't let them go, moments that made made us who we are, moments that broke us, moments we didn't let ourselves mourn, moments that we can't even begin to define... I like to call this the 'Yesterday' syndrome.

So like the boy that peaked in high school or the widower who still has long conversations with his wife... we all, to smaller degrees, hold onto precious memories. Resurrecting them at will, in moments of weakness. These memories, though they can be sources of great comfort, even joy are seldom an honest reflection of the actual event or person they represent. More often than not, we glorify what was to mythical proportions until it becomes so perfect in our memories... it becomes that much more irresistible.
But then all around us, while we are engrossed in our memories, people move on... governments change, people die, people are born, ambitions achieved, dreams broken... life... continues to happen. And all this while... we stand there enchanted by, entangled in, moments long gone...

Poets write odes to the past, like a famous bard famously said in The Lady of the lake:
Like the dew on the mountain,
Like the foam on the river,
Like the bubble on the fountain,
Thou art gone and forever...

Even movies pay tribute to this past-worship syndrome... Kill Bill- a moment in a woman's life that guides the rest of it... Seventeen again- the boy that peaked in high schood... To Gillian on her 37th birthday- a man who gets dizzy on his love for a woman that died two years ago...

So we know, victims to this syndrome aren't scarce... and have innumerable 'exhibit a's ' paraded before us as examples of why not to fall prey to this syndrome. And yet, like moths to a flame, we all do.

And with us thus stuck in moments past, the present, left to its own devices, goes awry. Slowly coming unstuck at the edges, letting the contents spill out and disappear through our careless fingers...

Would our memories disappear if we didn't constantly revisit them? Would they diminish?... No. In fact, if we let them catch us unawares instead of seeking them out, the experience might actually be even more profound... and perhaps, a little closer to what really was...

So maybe the key would be to not constantly revive and relive a memory... but to live in the now and let the memory take its own course...

Free Falling....

Tom Cruise singing at the top of his lungs in Jerry Maguire... a song about heartbreak... an anthem to freedom... ladies and gentlemen... free-falling...

She’s a good girl, loves her mama
Loves Jesus and America too
Shes a good girl, crazy ’bout Elvis
Loves horses and her boyfriend too

It’s a long day living in reseda
There’s a freeway runnin’ through the yard
And I’m a bad boy ’cause I don’t even miss her
I’m a bad boy for breakin her heart

And I’m free, free fallin’
Yeah I’m free, free fallin’

All the vampires walkin’ through the valley
Move west down ventura boulevard
And all the bad boys are standing in the shadows
All the good girls are home with broken hearts

And I’m free, free fallin’
Yeah I’m free, free fallin’
Free fallin’, now I’m free fallin’, now I’m
Free fallin’, now I’m free fallin’, now I’m

I wanna glide down over mulholland
I wanna write her name in the sky
Gonna free fall out into nothin’
Gonna leave this world for a while

And I’m free, free fallin’
Yeah I’m free, free fallin’