Life and other weird things

Saw The Aviator yesterday.
I guess it's Leonardo Di Caprio's best performance since 'What's Eating Gilbert Grape ?'.
He plays the eccentric thirties Hollywood Mogul and Aviation pioneer Howard Hughes with such realism that it made me feel uneasy just to watch him.
Clearly, Scorsese is making another DeNiro out of this man. Like all Scorsese films, this one too is not for the impatient viewer. The film carries on at a slow pace, but is involving without being boring.
The movie tells the story of the eccentric, often bordering on the lunatic, billionaire Howard Hughes. He thinks nothing of losing a million dollars (in the 1930's) just to reshoot a whole movie with the new technology of 'sound'.
In his later life he puts everything at stake to hold on to his dream of being the first one to start an international American airline.
The film is peppered with guest appearances, starting from Alec Baldwin as the scheming chief of PanAm, to Jude Law as Eroll Flynn, to William Dafoe as a detective. They are there for fleeting moments, and I barely just recognised them.
Cate Blanchette plays Katherine Hepburn marvellously, and the scene with her and her over-the-top family of nuts making Hughes lose his cool is one of the many beautifully constructed moments in this film.
But it's Leonardo all the way. This man is the future. He is going to be the Amitabh Bachchan of Hollywood. Mark that.
The scene where he first shows his most visible symptom of schizophrenia, that of repeating phrases, is terrifyingly shot. Show me the blueprints. It took me by complete surprise, and since I have personally knownmpeople afflicted by this dreadful illness, it made me realise how realistic this performance was.
This is an uneasy film.
And if this doesn't get Martin Scorsese the best Director Oscar, I will lose faith in the Academy Awards forever.
Go, Marty !

Yes. What WILL I not do ? Yesterdat I pretended to a client that I was well versed in a technology that I had, well, been exposed to for the last 5 days. I was thinking to myself, that if someone had asked me to take a Geography class for a set of slum dwellers I would have flatly refused, saying that I did not know enough of geography to teach anyone.
Yet, someone in Citigroup Bahrain thinks that I have executed a 6 month experimental project in COM, all because I managed to make him think so, and that because I want to get my company to send me there.
Greedy me.

There's a new hope for avid movie watchers like me. The latest Indian movies coming out in the market are filled with a new life. Not that there weren't good Indian movies this far. I can speak of the post Satyajit Ray era (that's when I started watching movies seriously), and can say that there have been some fantastic films made like Nayagan, Dil Chahta Hai, Lagaan, Akele Hum Akele Tum, Roja, and many others which have been forays into meaningful cinema, without turning their backs on commercial take homes.

Yet to see 2 great Indian films in as many weeks is a refreshingly new experience for me. The first of the two was Page 3. Nothing of what this story tells is new to a city dweller like me, but for it to be shown on the screen is a hugely powerful and humbling experience. The emptiness of the lives of the super rich who choose to splurge away their money on endless orgies of pleasure, is shown in sharp contrast to the gritty realities faced by the vast middle class majorities in the country. The most hard hitting scene for me was when one of the party goers is shopping for a dress for the night's orgy of opulence, she is told of an aquaintence's demise, and without batting an eyelid she asks the salesman to 'show her something in white'.
Madhur Bandarkar has indeed given us a masterpiece this time, and the commercial success of this film (in the cities, I might add, as this is a theme that would not cut much ice in Indian small towns or villages) shows that the Indian audience is essentially a rooter for a good story, and not big budget cry fests.

The second film to strike was Black. Unlike Page 3, this had a lot going for it pre-release. Like the names like Rani Mukherjee and the redoubtable Amitabh Bachchan on its cast. The surprise pack of the film though was little Ayesha Kapoor, who has given a splendid performance as the young deaf, mute and blind Michelle Macnally. Rani Mukherje takes over from her post interval with an energy I had not seen in any of her other films. I wonder how happy she had been just to have been offered this role. It's surely a film to die for. Amitabh Bachchan showed me yet again why he was the best. His acting prowess and screen personality is just unparelled. What a performance. No more words. AT the end of the day, this film also reinforces the fact that cinema is the director's baby. Just like an O'Henry short story can be made out from other writings, Sanjay Leela Bhansali's style has it's own signature. And, boy, has he succeeded on this one.

That's it then. It was a good two weeks. And what with the upcoming Aamir Khan film 'The Rising' commercial Hindi cinema hasn't had it this good in a long time.

Do I, in India, need an excuse to be charitable? For that matter, does anyone?

This tsunami overdose in the world around me is getting to me. And I don't mean the coverage it has got in the media. I believe the media should do more such coverage of disasters that strike places where the privileged white people do not stay.

What irritates me is the fact that everywhere I turn, there seems to be a box to collect money or clothes for the tsunami victims. These boxes are invariably accompanied by a picture of a child or two, preferably female, with a sorry ex-pression on its face.

I am ashamed to hear myself think that I don’t give two hoots about the little kids who come begging to me at every traffic light in Pune, and that I am even contemplating giving anything to the tsunami victims is a sign of a condescending city person looking down on the unfortunate lowlife.

So I decided not to make myself part of the tsunami-relief donating crowd, and instead visit a pavement right here in Pune, which I have seen many times, but never once looked at.

When I went there with what clothes I had decided to spare, it was an expected, but nonetheless shocking sight that met me.

I don’t know, and admittedly I never want to either, what kind of poverty makes people lose all self respect and actually beg for food or clothes. And I understood that it’s incredibly sad to see grown up adults, as old as my parents come out of their ‘houses’ (for want of a more respectable term) and splay their hands to take what they could. I guess after a human being has taken a certain amount, words like self respect and dignity lose all meaning. I cannot bring myself to think what happens in worse situations. If there is a God, I like to think that He did not mean things to be so.

I promised to myself that each month I would spend a thousand rupees on the families on that pavement. It’s a paltry sum which is less than what I spend on two parties, but I’ll wager it’s a start. Maybe I’ll grow more guts in the following months to give them more.

I guess a tsunami should never be an excuse to help out poor people again.