april 2008 films

american gangster - 3/5
good development, but denzel washington can’t quite shed his denzel washington image to embody frank lucas.

team america: world police - 4/5
this movie would’ve been a lot funnier if i’d seen it a few years earlier, but the jokes still hold.

cidade de deus (city of god) - 4.5/5
autobiography of a photojournalist told in fragments and photos. what’s not to love?

children of men - 4.5/5
amazing choreography and a

shaun of the dead - 4.5/5
sigh.

hot fuzz - 5/5
love.

run fatboy run - 2/5
this one’s a let down compared to the above two.

garden state - 3/5
new age, antipsychoticdrug, feel-good love story. didn’t quite restore my belief in love though.

elizabeth - 4.5/5
elizabeth’s transformation from a young girl to a commanding ruler is really well done.

elizabeth: the golden age - 3.5/5
not as good as the first movie, but cate blanchett is excellent, as always.

the other boleyn girl - 0.5/5
poor casting with dumbed down and rushed narration. for a much, much better version of the king henry viii-anne boleyn story, see the tudors.

confession

facebook and celebrity gossip websites have taken over my being. and time.
i’m certain “refresh”ing is a terrible addiction.

it’s just sad.
i must stop the madness.

support me!

not right-sided

she is unable to distinguish between the two - philosopher and professor. both are absent-minded fools of the desi world.

two months ago my mother pointed out that i was wearing my kameez backwards. she laughed, giving me an odd look.

she: you’ve turned into a falsafi.
me: you [i] wish.

similar things happened at least thrice within the subsequent couple of weeks. i say “similar” because the inside-out shirts were mixed in with simple backwards shirts. i even wore my scarf inside-out for the entire day without noticing until i caught my reflection in the university washroom before leaving school.

this thing about right-sidedness of clothing boggles me.
it’s as if my mind doesn’t register it as anything important unless and until it’s pointed out to me.

rectangle

i didn’t know what to do with it. neither did you. instead of making an L, i stuck two slips into a skinny rectangle. i’d seen the kids at school roll their bus transfers from rectangles into tidy conical things.

we scrunched the leaves between our palms; bits of cigarette and weed escaped the hold of my lazy joint, spilling on the coffee table. i’m certain some fell on the carpet that wouldn’t be vacuumed for another week. i was a busy gal. but hey, i had the eye drops ready.

it rained lightly that evening, and as we stepped out to the balcony, silently smoking while standing, we thought the neighbours saw us. you didn’t want to leave your spot though. i came back inside and waited for you to finish the leftover cigarette. when you walked in to sit beside me, i showed you my big, slanting scar. i don’t know why.

but hey, was it “visine original” or “visine workplace”? i can’t remember.

fake

this is a fake post reminding myself to post at least once a week beginning with the first week of may. (i’m also accepting ideas and/or requests for posts via email, fb or right here. (ahem, zb.))

that is all.

i regret to inform you…

it’s funny how your eyes scan for the word ‘regret,’ remarks prof. k.

there i am, sitting in his office, having walked in minutes before to talk about a paper on war: bataille vs. virilio vs. me. i fold my red, puffy jacket in half and hang it over the chair i nervously occupy.

every time i walk into this office, i realise this was the teacher who converted me from a bored english student to a person who wanted to interrogate all the meanings that one could interrogate in the word ‘philosophy.’

march 2008 films

interview with the vampire (1994) - 2/5
one of the most peculiar movie experiences. brad pitt, tom cruise, and kirsten dunst in the same movie. there’s just something not right about it. terrible make-up with a very bad story line, but an unwittingly hilarious movie.

donnie brasco (1997) - 5/5
i like johnny depp in all the movies i’ve seen of him, and this was no exception. al pacino’s character was perfect…and a good contrast to the the other gangster roles he’s played.

no country for old men (2007) - 1.5/5
there’s a couple of scenes i sort of like in this movie (e.g. coin toss scene), but overall, it just didn’t do it for me. ’twas too slow and the narrative adaptation very bare.

Falscher, Die (the counterfeiters) (2007) - 3/5
i’m not sure what kind of historical material the makers of this film had to work with (apparently they got into a lot of crap with the intelligence while researching for the movie), but it seems like the film was too condensed and cleaned up. artificial, maybe. it also reminded me of the bareness i felt in no country, and not in a good way.

sucky TV

our TV died last month.

after trying a bunch of different things ourselves and letting the thing sit there for a week - with no success - the family finally decided that i should call sony to get a technician to check it out.

while it worked -
…the picture quality paralleled sony plasma TVs at less than half the price of the plasma.
…it was worth every penny of the $2 800 (cdn) my mother paid for it 2 1/2 years ago.
…we were amazed at the mind-blowing technology: because of its replaceable lamp, the picture quality would never deteriorate.

vow. we clearly didn’t care about much else at the time.

two years later and the first lamp blew.
replacement: $300.

six months later, it was sick again.
required replacement: power box, lamp and power conditioner.
cost: $600+. plus $300 lamp replacement every two years.

after handing the estimate over to us, the technician gave me and mother a whatthehell! why are you spending so much money on this piece of crap? look. and so, we didn’t get it fixed. trying to figure out what to do next, we learned that sony stopped making plasma TVs two years ago because the technology sucks. it works well for three or four years - depending on usage - and then it’s over. nothing to repair. nothing to replace. gone.

the kind technician advised us that our best bet was to go for the sony bravia - an lcd TV that doesn’t have replacement parts and is not nearly as expensive as the plasma or the grand wega.

he best be right.

i couldn’t just leave, you know

today i was at aldo liquidation (outside eaton centre). as i was walking toward the exit, i suddenly stopped and made a u-turn to mock-browse the shoes and shiny things. i ended up staying longer than i meant to.
this is why.

february 2008 films

mystic river (2003) - 4/5
decent film. sean penn’s quite good and mostly convincing as the man with a shady past. it’s a shame laura linney’s character has such little on-screen time though.

the wind that shakes the barley (2006) - 3.5/5
it took me the first 5 minutes of the film to get used to the accent before i could get into it, but the film itself is great.

away from her (2006) - 5/5
this is one of the best movies i’ve ever seen, but don’t expect something loud and flashy. even a little bit. both of the leading actors - julie christie and gordon pinsent - are perfect. sarah polley’s work on this film is exquisite. i absolutely love the manifestly quiet tension and uncertainty that she masters throughout the film. my only criticism is her stereotypical treatment of the staff and nurses at the care home.

there will be blood (2007) - 2.5/5
this is too slow for my liking. while the acting overall is alright, it’s the final scene between daniel plainview (daniel day-lewis) and eli sunday (paul dano) that redeems the film.