Forget everything else. Have you seen Swades yet?
psa
- Post author By Vishal
- Post date January 14, 2005
- Tags Entertainment, iLevel.Blogspot, Reviews
Following a link from Caren’s blog, I came upon this test. I figure that since I’m going to rule the world anyway, I might as well see what kind of role models I have to call upon.
Since it gives you the option of taking multiple numbers of questions, I decided to do them all. First three times, on the short answer tests, I got this:
Then I took the longest one, and got this:
No, that can’t be right, I said, I must take this again, and ended up with this:
Sigh… one of them (supposedly) bonked Marilyn Monroe, but was shot in a convertible. The next guy had a bunch of palaces and gold guns and stuff, but ended up in a ditch with one hell of a facial hair problem. The third, well, he gave up a life of painting for a life of living in a (larger) hole and waving a lot.
Still, he did have a natty dress sense 😛
Yesterday I ate bheja masala, which is basically curried sheep’s brains. I can now cross “brains” off the list of foods to eat before I die.
As far as taste goes, it’s slightly underwhelming. Mind you, the version I had came in a heavily spiced gravy, but it tastes a bit like boiled egg-whites. Perhaps this has something to do with the general ineptitude of sheep; perhaps human brains have a sharper taste.
And yes, I did spend much of the meal fighting the urge to say “Braaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiinnns….” with my eyes upturned and my limp hand prodding forward.
Mahdah is a little bit of Oman you can reach from Dubai without crossing any borders (in fact, if you wanted to get here from Muscat, you’d need a permit to cross the UAE-Oman border at Hatta).
It’s a pretty place; a bit flatter than what one is used to in Muscat, but compared to Dubai it’s like another world. As someone who grew up in a landscape like the ones represented below, and then moved to a city where ‘vertical elevation’ meant a skyscraper and nothing else, it was like coming home. Not quite the spectacular scenery you find, say, on the way to Yitti via the long route from Rustaq, or even the river-beds at Nakhl or Wadi Hoquain, but still worth the trip.
Plus the day was gorgeous, partly cloudy, partly sunny, partly magical.
(note: click on the individual pics to see larger versions)
Just in case you thought I was kidding…
(note, this is exactly the same image that’s on the actual pickle bottles)
Chow Yun Fat is going to be in the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels.
Chow Yun Fat. Johnny Depp. In the same movie.
In two movies.
ohmygodohmygodohmygod.
*head asplodes*
To complete a triptych of food-related photos, the other day I popped down to the local Malayalee sandwich juice guy and ordered, among other things, a chicken fillet sandwich. Upon getting home, I was happy to see that they had labelled the boxes so I didn’t have to open them up and test them.
Of course, what he had written on the box did strike me as a little disconcerting at first:
There’s no accounting for taste.
Speaking of Malayalees and food, yesterday I was at the airport seeing someone off, when who should walk by but that uber-star of Malayalee cinema (not counting Shakeela, of course!), the media magnate of the meeshe and mundu, Mohanlal.
I had half a mind to shout, “Hey, your restaurant sucks!” but seeing as I was surrounded by literally hundreds of my more southern Malabar-coast cousins, all of whom swarmed towards the star the nanosecond they caught sight of him, I decided against it. I wouldn’t have lasted more than three seconds anyway. This was not the time to be going toe-to-toe with the (rather hefty) Mohanlal on the matter of how the prawn curry was inconsistent (not to mention the fact that his restaurant is called “Mohanlal’s Taste Buds” — I mean, what da fug?).
The Bangalorean parts of my genes told me that the proper thing to do was to write to the Deccan Herald, in a prolix letter that must begin, “Sir, Esteemed Yourself is being hailed by Humble Myself to bring to kind attention of All-Selves the matter of…etc, etc.”
The Mangalorean parts of me wanted to forget such trivial matters, and to discuss the price of gold in a lengthy inner monologue.
The Mumbaikar part of me told both of them to shut up.
This reminds me of the time I saw Nikhil Advani in Oxford Bookstore, Mumbai. I didn’t recognise him at the time (“Hmm, that guy looks familiar.” “Of course he does, he looks like Droopy!” “No, I mean, besides that…”), but I’m pretty sure I would have wanted to say, “Couldn’t you have just killed Shah Rukh quick and saved us all from a bitch of a migraine?”
Today in the supermarket I passed the condiments aisle, and legions of little Mohanlals grin at me from their branded pickle bottles, the contents of which could probably eat through steel in less time than it takes to toss an appam.
He may have millions of fans, and a restaurant, and his own brand of pickles, but I have Chicken Fellate Sandwich.
And on a final note, I drove by Simran’s Appa Kadai, and tell me, why on earth would I want to go to a restaurant that serves some Punjabi girl’s father kadai-style?
I’m sure we’ve all, at one time or the other, come across this situation: someone comes back after a concert, a movie, or any event you’re interested in, and instead of talking about the event, they go off on a tangent about how bad the parking was, or the weird guy who sat next to them, while you’re sitting there with the slowly dawning feeling that you aren’t going to ever find out about the concert itself. Watching Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind left me with similar feelings.
Eternal… is by no means a terrible movie; the concept of a person erasing people from their memories is fascinating, and seen from the mind’s eye of its protagonist, Joel Barish (Jim Carrey), it takes the form of a trippy, non-linear romp through his memories as all traces of his ex-girlfriend Clementine (Kate Winslet) are slowly and methodically wiped away.
The special effects in these scenes are top notch. As someone who knows some of the technical side of things, let me tell you, doing special effects on a moving camera shot is a nightmare. Eternal… employs a lot of handheld camera-work, and yet each subtle effect, be it a car literally disassembling out of existence, or the covers of thousands of books disappearing to white, is handled flawlessly.
The screenplay (By Charlie Kaufman, from a story by Gondry, Kaufman and Pierre Bismuth) itself, however, is less impressive, and doesn’t live up to the high standard of its premise. Joel and Clementine were pretty close, now they’ve broken up, and Clementine has had the memory of Joel erased from her. Joel decides, then, to do the same to her, i.e. have her erased from his brain. The rest of the film follows Joel on the night that the procedure takes place, and intercuts with the team performing the procedure on him.
(some Spoilers follow)
It is this subplot that I found more interesting than Joel and Clementine’s love story. There are some very intriguing characters here, and nearly all of them are wasted. Firstly, there is Patrick (Elijah Wood), an assistant at the clinic who — it is revealed early on — is using Joel’s discarded memorabilia of Clementine to woo her, replaying Joel’s words and memories. Patrick’s character, despite being worthy of an entire movie on his own (a man who steals other people’s memories for romantic gain) serves no purpose other than seeming a bit creepy, and giving us a look at post-procedure Clementine and how she’s not coping very well.
Then there’s Mary (Kirsten Dunst, in Eternal‘s best performance) as the clinic’s receptionist, and Tom Wilkinson’s Dr. Mierzwiak, seemingly the inventor of the erasure procedure. I don’t want to spoil too much, but suffice to say that when these guys’ story got going I was very irritated that the movie kept cutting back to Joel’s brain and yet another memory of him being a emotional arse and Clementine being somewhat likeable, but not quite.
And therein lies the problem for me: the protagonists aren’t particularly likeable people, they don’t really seem to be in love at any point — just going along for the socially approved girlfriend/boyfriend ride because they’re too uptight to work on themselves first. In fact, at the end of the story I’m not convinced that they won’t be back to the doctor in a week demanding another erasure of each other, and I’m the sort of guy who’ll believe any leap of logic in a romantic film! Any good story features a concievable change in the protagonist’s character, and while it may seem that Joel does make that change at the very end, it seems more out of curiosity than any self-improvement; it doesn’t sell for me, it doesn’t hold water.
(end Spoilers)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind has a lot worth watching; Kirsten Dunst, the special effects, and nobody in the cast puts in a bad performance. But it still feels like a missed opportunity. I wish I’d been able to hear about the concert.
Argh.
They’re all gone.
Two weeks ago, while packing my bags for Dubai, I very carefully placed a clear plastic pack wrapped in the softest clothes I had into my handbag. Today all the contents are gone. I have a distinct urge to book a ticket on the next flight to Mumbai, but alas, even if I could go there now I would not be able to replace the contents of the package.
Every year around Diwali, in Dadar, bamboo scaffolding stalls are propped up on the pavement and draped in gaudy red and saffron swathes of cloth, and in these are sold all manner of things we tend to consume during Diwali, like laddoos and chiwda and ghatia; you know, stuff you give to guests when they come over.
But, most importantly, they sell chaklis. They sell the best damn chaklis on earth, and now all the chaklis are gone. And, since Diwali is over, so are the stalls.
What makes it even weirder is that the stalls are operated in some way by the Shiv Sena, as I understand it. Now, here’s a bit of free advice from Uncle Vishal; if the Siv Sena stopped being a political party, calling a bandh every three days, and only sold chaklis all year round, they might actually end up ruling the world and people will love them for it.
Plus we’ll get their chaklis all year round.
Argh, now even the crumbs are gone.
I cry.