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The Dark Knight

Rating:	★★★★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Action & Adventure

What makes a movie great ?
It's not the plot in itself.
It's not about structure.
It's not about character.
It's about emotion.
There are three kinds of feelings when you watch a movie-boredom, interest and WOW !
Its all about the emotional impact of the movie on its viewers.

One word for "The Dark Knight ' would be WOW!
The movie is in no way cheesy.
Whereas Batman stands for justice, the Joker stands for pure chaos and anarchy.The joker understands that as a super villain , he needs a superhero on the other end of the spectrum.
The joker is truly enigmatic as he is evil for the sake of being evil and has no hidden agenda.He is there to test the limits of gotham city and its inhabitants.
No one is spared as they come under the spell of the joker and they are forced to meet their true selves.
While the majority don't buckle under joker , Harvey Dent is pushed over the edge and he becomes what he himself hates - a vigilante trying to avenge an unfair death.
Batman , on the other hand proves to be incorruptible and the joker himself acknowledges it.

The movie is dark and brooding.It has a very cool bike and cool scenes like the abduction of Lau from HongKong , which increased the movie's cool factor by tenfold.
BTW, did anyone notice Nokia's new iPod killer 'The Tube' in the movie ?
All in all , a great movie , which I need not reiterate unnecessarily.

Kismat Konnection

Rating:	★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Romantic Comedy

You could ask me , why I would write a review for 'Kismat Konnection' right after watching 'The Dark Knight'
As I watched The dark Knight , I realized why we love certain movies and why we hate certain others.
Its not hype, nor hoopla that can sustain a weak movie, but the emotional response it elicits from the viewer.
Any movie maker knows this.We Indians certainly know this.
I can remember watching 'Partner', and groaning throughout the way.It was aimed at the masses.Loosley based on the hollywood hit Hitch , but with barely a credible plot or convincing acting , the movie felt like a bunch of unconnected scenes spliced together and spiced up with low brow humour and exotic locales and a lot of flesh on display(I'm talking about shirtfree salman here)Yet surprisingly the movie went on to be the biggest grosser of that year, revealing the likes and dislikes of the lowest common denominator of the indian movie watching public.

It was never my decision to watch Kismat konnection.There were eight of us, and half had already watched hancock and the other half had already watched The dark Knight .
The only movies none of them had watched were KK and Contract.compared th RGV 's Contract , KK was looking a lot better.

But let me digress...A thing about raw beauty.
It is innocent in itself.
And the promise of pure beauty and its incorruptibility is truly intoxicating.
I mean she made Vidya Balan ,( whom I was in love with all these days )look pale beside her.
You know what you really need to get over a heartbreak ?Its someone who has that intoxicating effect on you.And boy she did, and blasted all those useless painful memories out to the moon.

Vidya aunty and shahid were ok, but vidya looks too old for chikna shahid.
Chemistry was non-existent, humour was not forthcoming,and juhi chawla looked over-botoxed and was irritating.Even the twist in the end was as predictable as Hillary's chances of winning the election.
I couldn't help yawning throughout the movie.
As a final knife in my back , she told me that Vidya aunty looked like my mom.Now I have to reject Vidya aunty so that I don't appear oedipal and disturbed.Damn you ! Vidya aunty was the last good thing I had.
Damn You !

The only difference

"The only difference between men and boys is the cost of their toys."- Anon

Well boys and girls...I'm not writing much these days because I've got a new toy...

And she's fun to play with.

False Starts :Romancing Mumbai

Romancing Mumbai is not a symptom.Its more of an affliction.
It begins with the kela diet.
It begins with Insomnia.
It begins with an emptiness - a gaping hole in the soul.
It begins with unrest.
It begins with desperation.

Though Romancing Mumbai puts a huge strain on the body , it peacefully numbs the mind and lets it float in oblivion.

On Good days Romancing Mumbai ends with blisters on both feet.
On bad days it ends with fever and delirium tremens.
I like the bad days better.

Romancing mumbai , as i learnt , is an acquired condition.A flashback to the 70's reveals another man ,an unemployed engineer ,out of money  Romancing Mumbai the same way.He was my father.

Romancing Mumbai takes you places .It allows you to see her in a fresh perspective.

Mumbai-she is a supreme temptress, a fiery seductress who tantalizes you with grandiose dreams.
But be careful , because she is schizophrenic ...she is an extremely hard mistress to please. She makes you fall in love with you , but she never loves you back.

Mumbai hates me.She is tired .An estimated ten thousand people come to mumbai everyday so that they can start all over again.Mumbai the city of dreams hates all these immigrants , all these intruders who barge in and expect heaven to be laid at their feet.
      She hates me too.I hate her for hating me, but I love her too.

It's complicated... you wouldn't understand.
I sure don't.
She hates me because I don't belong here...but I'm forced to stay .She gets even with me occasionally by making me sick , alienating me or by simply driving me insane.

Romancing Mumbai is my attempt to appease her.She is a hard mistress...pleasing her will be hard, But try , I must.Romancing Mumbai is also my choice of drug ...my novocaine , my barbiturate.Romancing Mumbai is my only alternative to alcohol which I detest.
Romancing Mumbai is my cure , a promise of panacea...
Loneliness, depression , insomnia -begone ye-for I have begun Romancing Mumbai !

 

Fight Club

I don't know what happened.
Fragments of conversations come back .
"Two bottles ? That's nothing !He drinks at least four to get high and then fucks me and passes out "

Its four in the morning.Its cold.I'm shivering.
     "What! Four ! No Way ! I pass out at two.How does he even manage to get it up after four ? "

Now I'm shivering uncontrollably.
                               Some thing's wrong.This is not me.I'm not there, but I can taste the squalid conditions of the dingy dark dirty cramped room I'm in , hear the smell of despair mixed with alcohol and paint thinner fumes and the sight of the distant rumblings of a local train go past vibrate in my bones.

Things go hazy.

                     "I'll show you how " he says and climbs on me, straddling  me , and then starts hitting me.
Too confused I do nothing.
I don't even know this guy, let alone know why he is hitting me , or sitting on my back.
Then I  feel no pain but only the chilling realization of his teeth sink into my flesh.This  gets me in a  frenzy.I'm numb and  my heart is racing...

Things go hazy...I blackout.

                        Now I see him on the ground.He's not moving.There's blood all over, I'm not sure whose.My jaw is hurting like hell.

                                                          I've never been in fights.

I'm not a fighter.Someday though I'd like to get into a fight with no consequences to faces afterwards.Something like fight club shit, beat the crap out of each other and then grab a beer later.No consequences, no regrets .Only release.

                                 Since my childhood , I've been only in two fights.Technically only one fight.
Ok ok , none of them were fights.Are you happy now ?
                          I punched a classmate for taking something from me(I don't remember what).I punched his soft stomach and watched him crumple down in horror.I hadn't expected such a dramatic reaction.
                  Five raps on the knuckles , kneeling down in front of the entire school , and an apology note from my parents - This was my punishment.
For years I was afraid the police would arrest me for assault.
This was in fourth grade.

The other fight was not a fight.It was me getting beaten up.
A bully , a classmate of mine , who was bored and wanted to have some fun came upto me and slapped me for throwing a stone at him(which I didn't).He was bigger than me and stronger than me, hell , he was the captain of the class kabaddi team and a black belt in karate.And I was just another geeky underweight runt with combed oily hair and a bad case of acne.

No, I was not just another geeky underweight runt .
I was a geeky underweight runt with a death wish.

I slapped him back and said that I didn't throw the stone at him and now we were even.
He grinned at me - a vicious grin that said , 'Boy , you just made my day '

As far as I was concerned we were even.I turned my back and started walking away.

Two words.

Bad Move.

I felt a station wagon crash into me.
                                                               Next thing I know I'm pinned against the wall by my collar and people are cheering on raucously.It was a free period and the entire class was there , my friends and all , but they were not going to take sides that day.
Even at the age of thirteen fear of death trumps over virtues like bonds of friendship, loyalty and of solidarity.
So they watched on,for violence,real or imagined (and in this case being real)was still exciting.
                                 And I refused to fight.
                                                            I said that I would not fight because we were even.At the time I was not worried about death, maiming injuries or  worse - the loss of face.I was concerned with being right.He had  hit me unjustly and I hit him back.We were even.
Case closed.
It was that simple.
Only it wasn't.
He had smelled blood and now he wanted to taste it.

But he kept pushing me all over, taunting me, baiting me to attack.
But I was a stuck record.
I repeated that we were even and I wouldn't fight.Over and over again.

So for the grand finale, he pushed me hard, over the stairs.
It was a five foot drop onto sand ,gravel and small rocks.

My life did not flash by me.
I did not backpedal in
slow motion screaming
 "NOOOOOOOO! "....
I didn't even fall down.

A classmate caught me before I went over.The bully left in disgust.
He had better things to do .

In his mind , there was nothing worse than a pacifist geek- oh there was !
a pacifist pimply underweight runty geek.
And I'd live another day, with minor bruises to my body and ego.

This was eight grade.

But this was different.
                             The fight was different.
                                                              The level of cruelty was different.
           There I was in a small dark dirty room with three others, three strangers.These were not familiar faces.I've never seen them before - If I knew how to , I'd sketch their faces  , but I'm sure they did not belong, or rather , I did not belong - it was not my world, not my life, not my consciousness that I had glimpsed upon.Now their faces are crumbling away in the sands of time and soon will be  forever lost in the black holes of memories.

I bit him back.
                      He bit me and in panic I bit him back, I'm not sure where , but I could feel the softness of his flesh yield to the relentless pressure of my jaws.
                          In the end I won , because I got the softer spot and held on to it.The blood was his, and I had tasted it.
I felt sick.

I woke up with a racing heart and a throbbing jaw and realized that it was only a dream.
As I woke up, it all seemed real-but not a part of my reality .What I glimpsed was another place, another time, another life.A glimpse through a dream portal to a somewhere that I did not belong to .

It was four in the morning.I was shivering again.
Tried to go back to sleep , but old memories kept coming back.
The boy who I punched in fourth grade is now a doctor.He promised that he'll kill himself by the age of thirty.
Five more years to go.

I'm waiting.

To see which one of us will last lonnger.

The bully who nearly killed me in eight grade failed to get through highschool .Twice.
Now he is an engineering student somewhere thanks to a generous donation to the college coffers by his rich dad.
The bully is now hitting on a pretty clasmate of mine.She was the kind of girl that every boy in the class had a crush on.
I suppose I had one too.
(Now I realize that every class has a girl like that and she usually ends up breaking everyone's heart).
                                      I was hitting on her too, but stopped at once  when I saw that the bully was hitting on her.Anyways she seems to be more receptive to him than me.What is it with girls and their fascination with bad boys, jerks and losers ?

And today , I woke up with an aching jaw and a bad dream vaguely tasting blood.
I hate insomnia and the dreams it cooks up.
I went up to the mirror to check myself.
                                     My heart skipped a beat as I saw it on my lower back near my left kidney.They were perfect half moon shaped and had a characteristic jagged serrated imprint deeply etched on my skin.

They were bite marks.

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Its been a week since I've come home now.

I've been spending most of my time avoiding all possible human contact, watching too much telivision and turning my brain into mush,taking long walks with my dog while drowining myself in alternative rock, nuzzling my cats soft furry belly and practising the art of losing myself in the realm of written words.

My currrent poison:Enchantress Of Florence by Salman Rushdie...a world where machiavelli and akbar are seduced by Qara Koz, Lady Black Eyes, a world where imaginary queens reign over the hearts of kings and where art and the artist meld and where lady love is as fickle as she must be ...I am sipping at it , slowly , and then rereading passages , and chewing on the sentences and roasting them in my head...Mmmm...I can taste the words...Can you ?

I know I haven't called you.You deserve much better.

I'm just not ready to face you .

I'm not ready to face humanity , and what it requires(and what it lacks )

I'm just not ready...

Hope you can understand.