12 Angry Men

I don't know why but I have this fetish for movies entirely, or at least mostly, shot in one place. Like Reservoir Dogs, which was largely based in a warehouse, Phone Booth and Dog Day Afternoon (another Lumet movie). These movies stand out because of their brilliant direction, acting and screenplay. It's pure cinema - no action sequences, no dreams, no beautiful locations, no frills - just pure brilliance.
The reason why I'm mentioning it here is because I just saw another movie of the kind. The movie in question is 12 Angry Men starring Henry Fonda and directed by Sidney Lumet. The plot is simple - it's about a jury reaching a conclusion in a case of murder. Everything is kept simple - the entire movie (except for 3 minutes) is shot inside a Jury Room in a courthouse. Even the characters have no names and are called by their numbers. The movie has a great pace and is never dull. The manner in which the jury members turn, one by one, is shown brilliantly. No wonder it's ranked as high as 13 on IMDB's all time list.
It's a pity there are very few (if any) such Hindi movies and also few recent Hollywood movies of the kind. So until the next one comes along, watch 12 Angry Men, you won't regret it.

Tumne mujhse mera khoon cheen liya..

I have a very strange quality. I feel very little pain. It's amazing but true (though this doesnt give you the freedom to hit me). I have a long history of cuts, wounds and other such injuries going entirely unnoticed just because they didn't pain at all. Most of the time I dont even realise that I'm hurt until I see a pool of blood on the ground due to my injury. This had become quite a joke to my friends who called me 'insensitive', a 'stone' and said that I ' had become comfortably numb'. As for me, it meant that I am always on the lookout for new ways to test my lack of pain. And mainly because of this reason, and also because of a desire to prove to myself that I'm still brave, I went for the blood donation camp in college. I figured getting the blood sucked out of you had to hurt. So I turned up, got my haemoglobin levels checked and then got ready to donate blood. Though I did feel a bit nervous I decided that going through with it was important for me to check my pain quotient. So with a purely selfish motive I did it. I put on my stoic face, which is reserved for such occasions ( others call it the extreme constipation look), and got ready to get a needle injected into me. And it was nothing. It didn't hurt a bit. The entire procedure, I barely felt anything. I had also heard stories of people fainting and all after donating blood. But I didn't feel a thing, neither during it, nor after it. In fact, within minutes of donating blood I was back riding my bike. So it was just another addition to the list of things that don't cause me pain (other items on this list include swallowing bubble gum, cutting myself while shaving & watching pathetic hindi movies). In fact the only time I got really nervous was when I was being injected with the needle. Not because of the needle, or the pain, but because of the fact that they were playing Kal Ho Naa Ho in the background. I mean come on, here you are, with a needle in your arms and the last song you want to hear is a song about a guy who dies in not so different circumstances than the one you are in. But that's what they decide to play. That's life I guess. So my quest goes on. So if anyone else has a painful plan in mind, do contact me. I'm ready for anything!

Dirty Dancing

If you were fortunate enough to be present in SGS Magnum Mall on Thursday at around 5 pm, you would have had an opportunity to see one of those rare sights - a sight that you rarely get to see and one which was definitely worth watching. Because at that time, me and my pal Kalpak were dancing to the tune of Dhoom Again to the unbounded delight of the entire crowd present there. Sad but true.
What happened was that McDowells was having a promotion stall in the mall for the Shankar Ehsaan Loy concert which was scheduled for the next day. And they were distributing goodies to anybody who would accept their challenge. Never one to shy away from a challenge (or from a bag of free goodies) I immediately accepted and went on stage along with Kalpak. It should be noted that all the challenges before ours consisted of silly stuff like shouting 'Cheers to Life' as loudly as possible. So I expected this to be something similar. Unfortunately fate had something else in store.
There was a guy dancing to Dhoom Again at the other end of the mall. So we were given a simple task - to copy his moves. What followed was possibly the funniest dance ever - me and Kalpak trying our best to imitate the other guy (who was pretty good) and making a mess out of it. There was no such thing as synchronisation - in fact at times it seemed that all three of us were dancing separately. And some of the moves were so stiff that some of the audience even fell over laughing at our incompetence. Kalpak even stopped once in between but seeing me dancing with gay abandon, he continued, pathetically, to sway to the beats. Unfortunately were not able to record this to add to our existing stock of bad dances, but by the common consensus of all those present, it was a pretty bad dance all right. And what we got was tickets for the concert. I didn't go there myself and neither did Kalpak but guess what, the whole show got canceled. Which was a pity. I guess we should have been there. If not a music concert, the whole public would have at least got a chance to see a great dance. As I said, a great pity indeed.

And the winner is...

I had secretly decided to award the 2000th visitor to my blog. And guess what, today the target was achieved. And the winner is....

Me.

I get a chocolate.

Yippeee!!

Goodbye Aloo

To be quite honest, initially I wasn't a very big fan of Inzamam-ul-Haq. He seemed to be a very lazy cricketer to my innocent eyes. Slow between the wickets, slow in the field & even slow while playing his shots. It was as if I was watching the game in slow motion. But as I grew up, I realised that his laziness was not a vice but something of a virtue. He seemed to have the time in the world to play his shots. He was never hurried into anything, never bullied into submission. And plus his laziness had a sort of elegance to it. I have to admit, Inzy had charm, the sort of charm the rest of the so-called "professional" cricketers lacked. He was like the common man's representative in the world of cricket. He was one of us, and yet while batting, he became one of them. Or even better than them.
And then who could forget the great fun we had watching Inzy giving press conferences. He was the one who made post match press conferences interesting with his style of talking & the stock phases that he consistently used ( " Inshallah, the boys played well today"). He might not have been the shrewdest captain and definitely was not the most media-savvy one around but he led by example - and his record speaks volumes about his dedication to the game.
But alas he's gone now and we shall miss him. Cricket really needs more characters like him and not the automatons that we see nowadays. And before I leave, I'll leave you with my favourite Inzy story, as told by Aamer Sohail.

"We were at a warm-up game in Zimbabwe once and the fast bowlers were on with the old ball. I was standing at slip with Inzi next to me. We crouched down as you do when the bowlers were coming in. Four or five balls later, I noticed Inzi was still crouching and surprised, I asked him if everything was ok. He replied, "I'm fine, just trying to sleep. The ball is old and reversing so there's hardly a chance there will be any edges to snap up."

The looong weekend

I'm having an extended weekend right now, thanks to the college having a holiday on friday. I guess that's the main reason why I have so much time to spare. I have absolutely no plans for the weekend. I am not going home, nor am I meeting anyone. I was going to hang out with my friends tonight but that ain't happening either. To kill time I decided to label all the posts on my blog but even that is done now. I have run out of movies to watch. And I just can't study with the exams more than a month away. So basically I don't have the slightest idea of what to do (though this does NOT mean that you can offload your dirty work onto me)
Hence since yesterday I have been working on my homepage. Most of you might not know this, but my homepage has been up for 364 weeks (or 7 years!). However I hadn't visited it myself for months and hadn't edited it for years. In fact before I restarted working on it (which was yesterday) it still read 'I have just appeared for my HSC examination'. So as a part of my massive reconstruction plan, I have already started a blog there which is kind of strange because I have to copy paste my posts from here to there and change all the here s to there s and vice-versa which is kinda annoying and hence I might not do that in the future when I don't have time for such silly stuff. Now I have decided to upload all my photos onto my homepage, so that all those of you who have unfortunately not seen enough of me during the last week can now do so online. But unfortunately my big plans for the website end here, I have no idea what to do next. There's a BCQC session tomorrow, so that's a relief. But that still leaves a day and a half with nothing to do. When will this weekend end? When can I get back to my normal life where I keep cribbing about how long the week is and how short the weekends are? When? There seems to be no end to this..

Johnny Gaddar

Sometimes you have a hunch that a certain movie is going to be great. There is no logic for it. You just do. Johnny Gaddar was one of those hunches. I just loved the name. And I just had to watch it. Which I did today. And I really loved the movie. The pace, the style, the 70s feel during the titles, everything!
And more importantly, I am loving the fact that I actually backed such a wild hunch and it came good. Now why doesn't this happen during exams?

A new beginning

Out of sheer lack of anything interesting to do and also as an attempt to avoid complete google-isation of my online identity, I have hence forth decided to blog here, instead of here. Since most of you are familiar with my old blog, I shall be updated both blogs simultaneously for a while after which I plan to shift here totally. At least that's the plan. And I really don't have a very good follow through record for plans hatched up at 2 in the night. So let's see what happens

Growing up brothers

Growing up brothers is kind of a mixed bag. Strangers, warriors, enemies, idiots, friends. One day you fight to the death; the next, you lay down your lives for each other.
- The Wonder Years

Missing you bro...