Thursday, November 17, 2011

The poetry of trees



Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky, we fell them down and turn them into paper, that we may record our emptiness. Kahlil Gibran

Tuesday, November 08, 2011

The Indian Terminator





The world as portrayed by books and movies are fragments of a bigger world, events and people and objects given importance based on one's perspective of life. Jane Austen's world view was influenced by the importance she gave to love and marriage; while George Orwell saw a world that was afflicted by forms of political power; the mainstream commercial movies of Bollywood told love stories, the old wine in many new bottles.


Given the amount of publicity given to the movie, Ra-One was disappointing. The movie is only Bollywood's version of Terminator 2 : Judgment Day though not as good as the orginal. As you start viewing the movie, you are shocked by a kind of comic beginning starring Shah Rukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra and Sanjay Dutt. You feel a surge of disappointment as the movie progresses. The graphics dominate the plot and you feel that may be this movie was made for kids. But the jokes on condoms and poweryoga startle you into realising that it cannot be. As G-One bids farewell to Sonia, you are suddenly reminded of the farewell scene in Terminator 2 : Judgment Day. 


The movie comes alive somewhere in the last 45 minutes and you feel that you have wasted a lot of your valuable weekend time, watching a movie that is badly arranged anyway. The world view of the creator is rather confusing: to defeat a machine you really need another machine. The saving grace is the song "Chamak Challo" that somehow makes up for the entire movie.

The serious and the trivial 

In the midst of this summer tedium, we meet once again in the same old park that we used to spend our young days. In those days, you and I w...