Agent Phil Coulson is Jesus

Agent Phil Coulson is Jesus. Actually he's not Jesus, he's just a run-of the mill human being. BUT HE DIED FOR US!
Norse god Loki killed him while superhumans were busy quarreling among each other. This gave Nick Fury an opportunity to say "He died for us!" and get all the superheros all sentimental thinking his blood is metaphorically on their hands. But its actually on Captain America collector cards - nerd awesomeness. Actually nerd analogue of religious artifact to give purpose to the group.

But what just happened - the humanist Joss Whedon just turned the tables in the human - superhuman- god scheme of things. For once the ordinary human being is at the reason to go to war, um against um, the infamous puny god. (Asgardians please dont hurt us because we hurt your delicate sentiments.)
Avengers are avenging an ordinary human being killed by a god. Put like that - who would think its the idea of one of the most entertaining films ever made? Death of Phil Coulson is the reason that for the first time they come together for one purpose. A noble message - why not join our forces for the good of the human?

Move over Nolan, Whedon's here, he will plant a dangerous idea in your mind, while you're wide awake without a whiz, smooth as a Ninja. A storyteller who made one of the highest grossing films ever without pissing most of the people off. Well played, Whedon, well played.

Lesson 1. Human beings matter. Only question that should matter at all, more important than "Does god exist?" is "What can we do to help human beings?"

Lesson 2. All those directors crying foul about their movies getting banned for various reasons - get crafty with your shiz, yo! Concealing dangerous ideas in movies full of awesomeness is SO much more fun.

On hind sight Batman trilogy seems too highbrow, obscure and pseudo intellectual compared to Whedon's formula for mass entertainment and clever thought. On hinder than hindsight, how can I ever stop loving the flip-a-truck-n-introduce-a-little-anarchy-joker-batman love story?

Update! on yet another viewing of the film, look what I found!

Selvig: "The Tesseract is showing me so much. It's...it's more than knowledge, it's truth."
The sleepy eyed Stellan Skaarsgard had a line which will easily be missed by many but whoooa! Joss Whedon had weaved it so dark and twisted it makes me drool. And its profound in most unlikely places like this. Actually observe how major part of the movie are conversations, especially the first half, most audience which came to avengers would be so bored. But agree with me or not I think above quotation is atheist. For the context its really good you watch the movie again.
Also the Captain America character is the most intriguing. He seems very republican and nationalist. He will say stuff like "Son,...just don't!" and "There's only one God and he doesnt dress like that."
And guess what, he has been asleep for 60 years. In terms of ideology and preachiness, please read between the lines what Joss is saying (or secretly laughing?) about those who agree with Captain America.

Trans

Neo: Who are you?

Trinity: My name is Trinity.

Neo: Trinity... [pauses] The Trinity that cracked the IRS d-base?

Trinity: That was a long time ago.

Neo: Jesus.

Trinity: What?

Neo: I just thought that... you were a guy.

Trinity: Most guys do.

There is a certain someone called Lana Wachowski. Matrix can now be watched again for the different interpretations. For the record I am straight. But I am fascinated by the stories where people have changed identities so powerfully and at the same time have embraced art and philosophy. I plan on studying the texts  which served as inspiration for The Matrix. Useful Website.

Renewed interest in the Wachowskis due to the life changing experience called Cloud Atlas.

Atonement ("The story can resume...")

“Find you, love you, marry you, and live without shame.” 

Could a man's life, at one point in it, be summed up in the above sentence? Would that be an indifferent oversimplification or just doing away of the trivial burdens of the rest of the life.
For the past week I have been taken in by Atonement. As it happens with me, I am always "taken in" .... bewitched, by one film or the other and it is a compulsion to watch it again and again till the parts of the whole start becoming smaller and smaller , till they become mundane. The progression is, the parts of the film become bigger, (vis-a- vis the whole) in repeated viewings, reveal themselves, enchant me, and then in further viewing start becoming smaller and mundane (which is sad and I wish I could consciously avoid it. Its possible to avoid it and i'm, working on it) So, I've loved Atonement, the movie. I am reading the novel and haven't finished it. While I'm reading it, the things I  instinctively felt about the tragedy, the story of the film were confirmed by the first seven chapters of the novel (that's where I'm at right now). I cried a lot. A lot. And I havent felt this way about a hero, the way I have about Robbie Turner, and Briony Tallis. I am happy that a character like Briony Tallis was created and am more than pleased with its portrayal by Ronan.
I was in love with the music of the film, especially, Elegy for Dunkirk and the four and a half minute long, uninterrupted shot, a single shot. I cant put into words (that is the reason I have started the study of literature, sentences and words and enrolled for a degree in English) how this single shot made me cry (of course) and touched the unseen parts of my heart. I am now thinking if the fact that its single shot worked against the film in some ways. The shot led me to explore its beautiful and powerful soundtrack and I somehow ended up listening to a lot of soundtracks of many films - among them - James Newton Howard's Sixth Sense. I thought, Atonement would very well fall apart in front of external logic (Do you see how the Robbie being accused of the crime is treated illogically, how can he be raping Lola if the cousins can testify he was the one who found them? Its lame how a bee draws Briony to witness the fountain encounter and a fallen ornament to the library.) But Shyamalan's films are enthusiastically accused and suffer this very argument  and  are disliked because it seems he's losing his touch and critics seem to take pleasure of this sad progression or decline of his career unfolding in front of their eyes.
Never let me go (2010) and now Atonement. I like these movies because they give me pain. Just give me eternal pain and sorrow, destitution, desolation, misery and most importantly, misfortune. A sense of pre determination, fate, loss of control and power over life, something shared by us all, Robbie and soldiers of war - a war which plays dice with lives of courageous noble men of honor. I thought of that part of our heart that says, this is it, this is the misfortune I've been given, because I have done something wrong - a mistake by the library - what my body made me do - the impulses of the body felt so strongly and uncontrollable in the moment. The part of our heart which makes a different choice of emotion - of pain and misery. How can we choose to be sad? unhappy? When Robbie talks with Cee in the cafe before leaving for the war, he confesses his guilt - he wishes he hadnt done what he did in the library to her, and now that act will haunt him and ruin his life.
The case of the film Atonement descends into tragedy because the initial premise of languishing well being and comfort wasn't going anywhere in the first place. What with swims and wasting by the pool...Cee and Robbie were a class apart anyway and Robbie was in debt of Cee's father and that's just not man enough of him. Cee and her mother have nothing to do around the house and what is Robbie doing gardening around after a degree from Cambridge? Who the fuck cares what I think about any fucking movie that comes out in the horde of movies every fucking year? But no-one cares what you think about movies or about what you think about my opinions either. So- what its really about is one's expression and venting. Its a very selfish exercise and nobody should expect to make a living out of anything remotely like this or writing as a whole.
Robbie sees many 13 - 15 year old school girls dead and laid in front of him (it had to be little girls not a random agglomeration of dead bodies) and  nobody held accounted for murder of innocent while his life and lives of millions of soldiers of nations are expendable.
Children. Someone has to pay for the negligence towards children. For, no-one understands how frustrating it is to be a child (Remember what Clementine said? ...that was in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, by the way) and there is loneliness and helplessness when nobody understands your experiences as a child. The judgments about sex and love, intimacy, relationships that children -like Briony - derive, are misguided; but they were taken for granted, always, in the first place. When a child sees the act of love making by chance, he/ she is almost always alone and its always upto him what to make of it. How to deal with the horror or the otherworldliness of it. Thanks to McEwan a story is constructed so that people pay for taking for granted a 13 year old's perceptions. I mean who cares about the perceptions about sex of a 13 year old? Her mother certainly doesnt. Nobody cares to shape them, guide them and show the proper way. I am angry with this world of self help and religious buffoonery which is at your service for your problems of life when you are adults.  Sixth sense was about fears, healing and purpose of life and actions and conditions of a little boy. With stories of tragedy or premise of supernatural writers want to bring to light the confusion of childhood. A play is how Briony is dealing with the concept of love and everything surrounding her - as it turns out writing is the tool of dealing with childhood travesties for her and for the rest of her life, a support. Music of typewriter deftly conveys brutal snap judgments - it is Briony's language. In the end she,- a coward till the very end - a prisoner to the 13 year old self confesses she could not confront neither her sister nor Robbie. She could make a gesture of atonement the only way she knew - through writing. I think our inability to deal with children can be the single most important crime and the source of all our undoing.
The ending is the kicker. What is real? Have we been seeing the narrative of Briony herself? The ultimate vanity of a novelist? Did Briony decide,all along the narrative of Robbie and Cecilia's love that we see on screen? How will a happy ending change you? What purpose will be served by reality or honesty? Who's escape is it, the writer's or the reader's? It was she, the god, who gave them their happiness. In the face of Venessa Redgrave you see the 13 year old who hasnt changed, who still says it like it is, to the brain of a writer.
Could this film touch those who lost dear ones on the last day of evacuation of Dunkirk? Lives which  were changed by chance cruelly, simply swayed like a branch of a tree and a lifetime of love and longing was decreed.

I think roger ebert reveals a LOT of the plot of a movie. The first time i read his review of the dark knight and i thought "gee, whats the big deal with this review? he has revealed so many parts of the story!" Review of Transformers didnt help.
then i read his review for adaptation. and i was impressed. and i thought American beauty should be the real test, and he passed it. A very objective point of view but written with great wisdom.
But it did irk me that he tells the incident blatantly, really a dampener if you like to not know before watching. If secretly he thinks that revealing would make people happy then i would say its a cheap trick.
I reached his site because i was reading about alfred hitcock. i read about the "McGuffin" and i was surprised that there is a mcguffin in transformers.

finally,all by myself.

Its a saturday morning and i am all by myself. good, thank god for this gift.
there was this marketing event of BMA in collaboration with times for which they needed volunteers.
no sir, thank you. nothing matches freedom and leisure on a saturday morning.
the week slipped away in a jiffy. felt nice. many night outs, upset stomach,tests and slippery deadlines of the assignments. all went well. now is the time for some flow of nike consciousness.





last saturday i watched the namesake (the movie) with arpit. but i was so upset with the sunday that i couldn't express my gratitude for the saturday in my last blog.
you watch such films and feel good about living. life is so many things good and bad, that we don't know. but living, you create it every now and then. its who you are and what you create.
i wanted to see ashoke ashima and gogol on the screen. see the life that ashoke and asima made.
it is too much risk i must say to put your trust on mira nair. after i have read the book, ashok and ashima and gogol live so vividly in my mind. they are delicately placed. i look at them with such compassion and longing.
where will irfan khan,tabu and kal penn be? yes, it is quite a risk. but there was this smidgen of hope.

the movie satisfies me 90 % perhaps. and thats a lot. i wouldnt critique the film, its a well made film, with meticulously written script which stuck with the sequence of the books events and caught all the little emotions and of course the big ones as well. i loved the photography.
all the three actors pass the exam. though kal penn doesn't with as many of those flying colors as the other two do. sonya is exactly how i thought her to be, maushumi however isnt. its a beautiful movie. please go watch it.

review of the movie is here.

we could talk about gogol though.
some people just dont get gogol. the fact is, its very difficult to understand what gogol went through. the same way that its next to impossible for people in general to listen to Chieko in Babel

was ashoke unfair to gogol?
was gogol in turn unfair and ungrateful to his parents?
these questions popped up in my head last week in the middle of my quantitative techniques assignment. and i thought of something which i had similarly said about some other people.
they are simple people, not heroes. they are susceptible. they should be allowed to be weak, make mistakes, do what their heart screams out. what ashoke and asima did was the best that they could do. the same for gogol. if gogol fell prey to the dilemma, it was not his fault, things were decided for him before he was born.

Just yesterday I got photographs from vishal which were snapped four years ago from my own camera. they scanned it and put it on picasa. they are amazing. us, barely out of the high schools, the first semester at bits.






by the way, yesterday was aks's birthday!!
you are one of my best and oldest friends......
happy birthday once again aks!!



current music : new york nagaram - a r rehman
current mood : planning/ thoughtful

A good year

A quick post, I watched "A Good year". And I dont care what film critics say,they are "wankers", I feel that its one of the better films of this year. It solved a few problems for me.Ah, well I just dont keep from problems do I? but it changed my perspective. I love life like that. It doesnt mean that one must follow Max skinner and skit off to a life of clamness, but its a question of maturity. I remembered the punchline of the movie all the time I watched the movie("Everything matures,eventually") and in the end learned how max skinner has matured, and the aweful tasting wine of La Siroque is just a metaphor.After the film I felt such an urge of well being,I said to myself,there's nothing more important in life than family, friends, love, the people that care about you the most, let go of the trivial matters!! I called my parents and then my best friend and then talked just about anything for a long time on the phone.

You would say i am crazy but i believe the smile of russell crowe in the poster is about maturity. Its like saying "I understand, I dont mind" sheer satisfaction and immunity to any doubt, self-doubt or otherwise. This movie is magical.
This week has rather been enlightening. The gyan:
1. Words are deceptive purveyors of truth. Dont cling to thiem, try to see through them, that requires maturity. (Dont say that the word which once left your tongue can never be taken back)
2. So let go of the pain caused by the words, people dont mean what they say always, all the more when their blood is boiling. (read maturity)
3. Forgive them. they wont ask for it but you have to somewhere they love you too (read maturity again)
4. Do what you love, very very crucial, its never too late, joy begets joy, and if fate asks you to do something you dont like then take pains to make it likeable, loveable, try to see through the crap and imagine it to be something related to what you love. its all part of the same system (the alchemist)


...and now a great song to groove to! dont mind the fat lady people! she sings heaven! and the tabla is heavenly fluid,(God, a millionth time, WHY DID I STOP LEARNING TABLA!! *sobs*)

Solitary Sunday

Today I decided to lie my way to soltitude. Yes, got ready at 10 am (very early by sunday standards, if you ask me) and lied to my cousin and other roommates that I was going to Piyush's apartment. Off I went to watch "Lady in the water" , my second movie in last seven days. More than watching the movie, being all by myself was so heavy on my mind. I can almost feel my breathing outrightly erratic when I am surrounded in a room by 5 people (just people, okay, if 4 of them are smoking, I am dead). When I am on a road, filled with, no matter a hundred people walking up and down on it, all by myself, my breathing is relaxed. Sometimes there's this compulsive need to let thoughts flow random and wild and be alone...just naturally as they would like a river.
Anyway, so I watched lady in the water. I realised that the common motive of m night shyamalan movies or of his main character is emotional healing or physical salvation. In sixth sense, a small boy provides solace to dead souls, bruce willis is a hero who will help the needy in unbreakable, mel gibson will save his family thanx to his spirituality/beliefs in signs. Pardon me, I still havent watched the village. In each of his films however his style has been markedly different, the means to the salvage in the climax have also been different. It was communication with the dead in 6th sense and extra terrestrials in signs while unbreakable was more general in context of superpower and also it was different in the sense that it brought out the fact to the viewer that samuel l jackson and bruce willis stand at the two opposites. It is easy to confuse yourself and say that sixth sense was just a horror movie and signs was yet another movie on ET. The endings of all his films fill me up with immense warmth. The portrayal of the act of healing is very nice. It should fill the audience's heart with hope and peace. The scene in sixth sense when haley joel osment sits in a trolley and his mother pushes it and they both run on the road is one of my favourites. He opens his arms and breaths relief, with a wide smile on his face;its relaxing and invigorating.
Lady in the water is different again because the means to the salvage are different, its a bed time story this time but what sets it different still is that the savior (the Narf named Story) has to be protected. So its interesting when the savior is not superman, very human and touching. In all his films the heroes, haley joel osment,bruce willis,dallas howard, mel gibson, have their own dilemmas, problems, weaknesses, sufferings,they are not perfect, they too need to be helped (physically in the case of the latest one). Pace of this movie is faster than his previous ones. I hoped for better cinematography though. The film needed more meticulous work on the screen play. M night shyamalan is a good actor as well; Paul giamatti was amazing with the stuttering. But I do feel the movie could have been made a lot better. I know I am probably gonna end up watching it a couple of times more.

PS: I have finally realised that I cannot say a lie with confidence. gotta practice to be shamelessly forthright.No doubt written form of communication suits me better.

Current Mood: Pro active
Current Music: "Where's the party tonight?" - Kabhi Alvida na kehna ( I am just gonna listen to its songs ...i swear!)
"My Hump" - Black Eyed Peas

"Oye Bhain de Takke!!"

"Ek pair past mein to doosra future mein daal ke baithe hain, islye to aaj par moot rahe hain"- DJ (Aamir Khan)
"Tumhare maa ki aankh"- Sue (Alice Patton)
the dialogues which touched the hearts of millions ..ok not all the millions but those like me who would rather like to talk like that.
I saw RDB!!
better late than never really..I mean there are bad days and there are good days but I didnt know they came absolutely one after the other ...this movie totally perked me up(from the sad mood of which previous post bears the testimony)- and made my hair stand on an end- a mini post mortem of the movie - wont write much but lotsa fotos!

People who rocked-
Aamir khan - DJ- obb..
- Sidhdarth - THE Dude!!
- Sue - Alice Patton- cute hindi talking brit
- Prasoon Joshi - the dialogues and the lyrics rock!! ....I am his fan I mean he is an MBA working for coke and writes amazing lyrics and hindi literature - thats the stuff.
- The misc- ARR - the diro - ROM- The story writer - Kamlesh pandey - two thums up to all of them ..and most brilliant- photography- binod pradhan - four thumbs up to him
sequences i loved -
- the salute to amar jawan and India Gate with the rap on Paathshala
- the falling down choreography on Khalbali
- the dhaba
- the climax

RDB trivia (by Nike the nagpuri deshpande)
which book was DJ (Aamir khan) reading/ had in his hand in the song tu bin bataye, just before he wraps his jacket around sue?
Answer - Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts