Numerology mania

These days Bollywood films release with strange names. By strange names I mean Singh is Kinng, Kismat Konnection etc. Guess you got it. The English words in these movie names are distorted based on suggestions from certain numerologists, who predict that if king is written as kinng and connection as Konnection, the movie will gross in the box office! Now, that is awful!

I’ve never heard of any film that’s made decently becoming a flop in theatres. If that is the case, I feel film makers, instead of working hard to make good films, are focusing their attention on such petty stuff as numerology and sorts and then making bad films which flop anyways.

Ekta Kapoor’s ‘K’ mania is another example, where all of her serials start with the letter ‘K’. So much so that the great epic of India becomes ‘Kahani Hamaray Mahabharat Ki’ now!

When language, culture etc. are tainted for the inability to make good films/serials, I feel we are on an unscrupulous path. And I wonder; who these numerologists are? Are they linguists? And aren’t these blind beliefs of twenty first century?

Bhool Bhulaiyya

Went to watch the film Bhool Bhulaiyya due to the inner desire of a mallu to know how one of the classics of his language was re-made for a different audience. I knew Priyan would try his best to make this film as worst as possible, but never thought it would be such pathetic.

When I came out of the theatre, it got reinstated in my mind that actors of the genre Akshay and Vidya can never perform beyond a certain level. And a few words to Priyadarshan; you are best at doing comedy and that is your core competency. Please dont do anything that doesnt fit you, by which you would ruin your own reputation and more importantly, ruin the image of a great movie from Malayalam. Priyan, you have any idea what the people who had seen the film Bhool Bhulaiyya had thought about one of the greatest malayalam films, Manichithrathazhu??

borN iN californiA

Michael Sullivan, the professional assassin, with his elder son, decided for the Road to Perdition, when his wife and younger son were killed by the same mafia he had worked for.

A year back, Viktor Navorski of Eastern Europe was stranded in The Terminal of John F. Kennedy airport for almost a year because his homeland erupted in a fiery coup while he was in air en route to America. According to the airport officials, he was carrying a passport from nowhere.

Chuck Noland who worked for FedEx was Cast Away from the main land subsequent to a plain crash in the sea. He had nothing but faith with him to escape from the remote island.

Joe Fox, owner of Fox Books couldn’t help himself whenever the computer screen said You’ve Got Mail. He didn't know that the mails were from the shop girl, just around the corner.

Captain John H. Miller, the man of courage and leadership, sacrificed his life for Saving Private Ryan.

Jim Lovell’s mission to the moon in Apollo 13 was faced with a few problems. Though the team couldn’t land on the moon, they were able to return safely.

Forrest Gump, all he does turns the best. And it seems, the path to success is being dumb.

Sam Baldwin and his mother-lost-son were Sleepless in Seattle and things changed when his son traveled all alone Trans America to the Empire State building to get a wife for his father.

Allen Bauer had an unthinkable affair with a mermaid whom he met during a voyage through sea in his childhood and years later his life was in a Splash.

Robert Langdon is on his way to crack The Da Vinci Code in March 2006 to unravel the secrets behind the Holy Grail and the descendents of Jesus Christ.

The first Tom Hanks film I saw was Splash, which was aired by Doordarshan long back as a Saturday night movie. I didn’t know that the name of the hero in that film was Tom Hanks then.

No other Hollywood actor would’ve acted in so wide a variety of characters, be it a true murderer in Road to Perdition or the refugee in The Terminal. Tom Hanks does all his characters with such a passion that sometimes I wonder how well he transforms himself and lives in to these characters.

The journey which changed history

One week break and I was all the way busy watching movies. Since most of them were romantic ones, I was also in a romantic mood :-). Before Sunrise, Before Sunset (These are sequels), 100 Girls (Romantic Comedy) were some of those romantic flicks. The Mating habits of Earthbound human was too funny. I have watched one of my all time favorites, Amelie, once again. Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, Ong Bak – Thai Warrior etc. followed suite. Everything was going fine until I saw The Motorcycle Diaries.

Diarios de motocicleta (2004) talks about a journey embarked by Ernesto Guevara (23) and Alberto Granado (29), typical college students of the 1950s, on a motorcycle, looking for chicks, fun and adventure before they grow up and have a more serious life. They decided to travel across Argentina, Chile, Brazil and Peru covering more than 10,000 kilometers.

Initially the journey was adventurous. But Ernesto, who was in his final year of medicine and an acute asthma patient, as they explored the inlands, was touched by the hardships and exploitations faced by the normal people of Latin America. The poor farmers' lands were captured using power and were made to work like slaves in mines and factories. After completing his journey, he flew back to Buenos Aires with a mind that had decided something. He finished his graduation and then what he did is history.

After liberating Cuba along with Fidel Castro, Ernesto moved on to other Latin American countries for their liberation. He believed that only a revolution can bring out a change. People called him ‘Commander Che’, ‘Che Guevara’, or simply ‘Che’ (corresponds to mate/pal/man/dude in colloquial Argentinean dialect). Later in October 1967, he was killed by the CIA backed Bolivian army in La Higuera near Vallegrande, Bolivia. He was on his feat of liberating Bolivia and was engaged in Guerilla Warfare in the Bolivian forests when he was caught.

The thing I liked about Dr. Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna is the power of his vision. He dreamt about a united South America without borders, bound by a common mestizo (mixture of European and Amerindian, the people of Latin America fall under these origins) culture. Since he chose the revolutionary way, no wonder why the US felt an imminent threat growing in the form of a leftist super nation in their vicinity and assassinated him.

Meanwhile I was also thinking about the recent US attacks on Iraq as well as Afghanistan and the ‘forced-peace’ prevailed during cold war time. When USSR was there, there were less such attacks done by the US and whenever an attack happened the USSR was there to counter it. That is why I called it ‘forced-peace’. Had the USSR been there, these attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan wouldn’t have happened. Hence, history would have been different if a big leftist nation as dreamed by Che, was formed near the US under their nose. Might be a gut feeling, but still, I feel that if such a nation was there, the US wouldn’t have dared to attack other countries as part of its deliberate act of proclaiming supremacy and looting natural resources of other countries.

Thus, The Motorcycle Diaries, based on the diary notes of Che Guevara, talks about a journey started for fun but changed the course of history. It is a matter of fact that the rural India is still under exploitation of the weaker classes, particularly in states like Bihar, UP, Andhra Pradesh etc. (Please don’t get offended, but this is a truth). May be not to revolutionize things like Che did, but when will I start such a journey through the hamlets of India?