Movies: "The Aviator" and more

Three recent movies I saw:

The Aviator: A moving movie. I borrowed it from the lending library and then borrowed it again to see some of the extra stuff (like a documentary on Howard Hughes). The movie is quite true to life it seems, after comparing with the documentary and other stuff. Howard Hughes is a charismatic guy who quite captures my imagination. His struggles with obsessive compulsive disorder are very moving. Everything else in the movie is good, acting, moviemaking, background music etc.

Pelican Brief: I saw this initially a few days back on cable TV. The opening scenes were strong, and I got this prickly sense that doesn't come too often nowadays, that something of quality is coming up. I saw it for some time but had to abandon as Priya was around and she wanted to talk, and switch to some other channel and stuff. I got lucky and bumped into the movie at the lending library recently and saw it. It was a little bit of a letdown, technically strong and nicely taken but... not quite there. Still, nice one.

Then last night I had a difficult time sleeping, which happens sometimes. I ended up watching 3 (good!) movies on cable, though through my luck, not a single one fully. I'm really surprised to find decent movies on cable (the channel was Z Studio) and the ad breaks were small which was a huge plus. The movies were "About A Boy", "Legally Blonde" and "An Unfinished Life". About A Boy was playing when I first switched on the TV and started flipping channels. I've seen this before, this is a *great* movie and a *great* book by Nick Hornby. I finished seeing it and then they were playing Legally Blond. Another sweet movie so I started watching it, when Priya pleaded with me to come back to bed. I did so but wasn't able to sleep again, so got up and padded back to the hall to continue watching, but the movie had finished by then, which was highly disappointing. The next movie was "An Unfinished Life" by Lasse Hallstrom, which I hadn't seen and hadn't heard of either. It was pretty nice but not that fresh/original, quite easily pigeonholed into a class of movies (Brokeback Mountain, Snow Falling on Cedars). The power went off briefly while watching the movie, so I didn't get to watch this fully either :-(.
I'm glad I did the 'night shows', feels good to gorge on decent movies now and then.

BTW, I use headphones to watch movies nowadays, because a.) my hearing is definitely not that good, I've been referred to a specialist for this, something that I haven't followed through on yet, 2.) the sound on our Onida TV is pretty crap 3.) it doesn't disturb Priya when she's sleeping.


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Site of the day: Here's a good blog by an Indian author of childrens' books called Manjula Padmanabhan : http://marginalien.blogspot.com/

Salon stuff

Today's Salon has an interview with Francis Collins (you need to watch an ad to get access to site if you don't have membership).
Francis Collins is a *very* heavyweight biologist as well as a devout Christian. I didn't read the full article, the language of Christianity still puts me off. But he makes one point which I think is very important -- one that I have vaguely meandered towards in my own thinking. Let me explain:

So I believe that there is some kind of mystery about the whole existence thing (that should be self-evident, and shame on you if you are not sensitive enough to atleast occasionally feel it). Personally, I go one step more and feel that there is some kind of *stuff* happening out there that we are normally not attuned to. That's pretty much it from me on belief :-).

So going from there:
--I'm interested in the world evolving to the state where most people see this
--I feel religions are a distorted reading of some people who did see this and tried to capture this

So its necessary for religious people to widen their view, to reconcile their religions with other religions for a start. That straightaway hits a big roadblock -- when your holy book says that yours is the only true religion how can you be a good believer and be comfortable with other religions ? Finally you have got to try to convert those people, there's no way around it. JK said something once about 'tolerance' being a very strange virtue and while I don't know in what context he said this, it seems appropriate here.

So Collins makes a very big step that almost no religious person seems inclined to take -- he does not take the bible literally. That is huge. It straightaway cuts a whole lot of gordian knots. It makes science a lot more compatible with religion. It allows religious people to start widening their horizons and examining other religions seriously without losing their essential religiosity.

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The other thing that Salon has, which I higly recommend (again without partaking of it too much myself!) is a feature called Audiofile, which has a free audio download of a music piece every day. Its very eclectic and very literate, and is a very convenient way to keep your interest in music alive. I used it rarely in the past due to my stressed-out lifestyle, but am trying to play with it more nowadays with very enjoyable results.

Ogden Nash verse ..

"Shake and shake the catsup bottle
None will come, and then a lot'll"

"Shall We Dance, Mr. Clark ?"

Priya and I saw Shall We Dance last night and enjoyed it. We danced (freeform :-) ) to Anjelique Kidjo afterwards.
The movie was light and fun, but I'm sure the Japanese original would have been lovely. I do miss being able to see pretty much any movie in the world that you might want to see, something probably unique to the US among all countries.

Small small tings

There's a brand of chicken around here, Suguna Chicken, that advertises itself as:

Younger * Tender * Better

Something to chew on/food for thought

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There is a current dustup going on in Kerala with one of the main priests of the Ayyappa temple being accused of having an affair and so on. The most interesting thing about it from my and this blog's point of view however, is the musicality of the names of the primary characters involved: Thantri Kantararu Mohanaru is the accused, and his father who has taken over from him temporarily is Thantri Kantararu Maheswararu.

You can google to find out more about what's going on with the story.

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Ad for Bharat Matrimony:

For car models I check with my friends
For marriage I trust Bharat Matrimony

Satisfied repeat customer, huh ?