karmically speaking

Bloggy Goodness

2011-05-14T10:14:00.001-04:00

I have to say I miss blogging. I miss reading some of the wonderful blogs out there, and being able to put down my own thoughts/ramblings et al.
The change coming to my life may give me a little time to pursue some of these interests ..or not!
I have had several false starts.. Or re-starts so to say.
Maybe in a couple of weeks.
Or maybe when the fancy strikes me..like it does now, waiting for my train.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Austerity Rocks!!!! .. Or something

2011-02-10T05:21:00.001-05:00

This is just plain creepy in some ways. But in other words the Galtian overlords and those who do their bidding on the other side of the Atlantic, decree that austerity is good for the masses.
So what in the world is wrong with using the heat from a crematorium next door to heat the community pool next door?
Crematory to heat swimming pool
Does this mean that for the pool to stay heated at times of need the death rate has to be at a certain level?
Inquiring minds want to know!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Privacy on FB?

2011-01-19T07:49:00.001-05:00

You get to use FB for free. The only way FB can make money is with you..it's users. You are the product they sell..to their advertisers.
And as much as they make a noise about protecting their users privacy, the fact is that it is a goal directly in opposition to their need to make money by selling the same data to their advertisers.
So this news by way of GigaOm latest does not surprise me at all.

Facebook is learning that it may need to move more slowly and more thoughtfully as it pushes users to share more sensitive information. Just three days after introducing a new feature that allows users to share their mobile phone number and address with applications and third-party websites, Facebook said late last night that it is suspending the change as it works to clarify the permission process.

I don't think FB cares about users privacy, despite the noises it makes, almost every new feature they have rolled out has had concerns about privacy.
Big reason why I don't talk about personal or professional stuff on FB. And also why there are no family pictures on FB, despite the changes in my life.
I just don't trust FB.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

2011!

2011-01-19T06:23:00.001-05:00

So this space has been kind of neglected for a while now.
Mostly due to the fact that work has been busy for a long while, with hardly any downtime. Which I guess is a good thing, given the state of affairs.
Another reason for not looking at this space was the lack of a decent mobile blogging app. I seem to have found one and so am giving this a try.
And no Facebook(FB) does not qualify as a tool for blogging.
FB has it's uses but I know quite a few people who only maintain a presence there, and would rather interact via phone or email.
Count me amongst one of those.
But I digress, this is a test post, not sure how that will go.
I may blog again if this mobile app works.
Writing this on the train to work.
Happy 2011 to anyone reading this.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

2010-07-24T08:15:00.000-04:00

Summer 2010..
It has been a hot one, as if that needed a restatement of sorts. El Nino aside, the upward warming trends over the long term continue. We had the hottest June in recorded history and the hottest first half of 2010 ever recorded and Arctic sea ice melted at a record pace. link (that is if you are in to science and facts).
But this one is not about the planet being cooked (do we have a Plan(et) B?

With heat indexes close to a 100, the temp at 7pm yesterday was around 95 and humidity high. I managed to jog (eke?) 3 miles out of my aging body.

And I looked like shit and felt a bit like it too for a bit. But I had my hydration going well so rebounded back quick. I am aching for cold weather, always loved cold weather. With each passing day get closer to fall and football! Yay!

2010-07-18T16:25:00.000-04:00

The Wind Journeys (Spanish: Los viajes del viento)

A thank you to the eclectic Lotusreads for telling me about this movie!.
What do you think of when you think of Colombia? Drug Lords? The right wing revolutionaries?
Set aside all those notions that one may form about a country by the woefully inadequate stuff that we in the US often get packaged as "news".
"The Wind Journeys" by director Ciro Guerra depicts a different Colombia, one of people living in small villages and eking out a simple existence, with music forming an important part of their lives.
Yes, this is a movie about music to some extent, but it is also more than that. It is road trip, one that happens largely in silence (or as one would say nothing much happens for periods of the movie), about the young and the old, and about ones purpose in life.
The film follows the laconic Ignacio Carrillo (Marciano Martínez), who has recently lost his wife and believes that it is due to the horned accordion he plays, which is cursed by the devil and must be returned to his master and maker Guerra. Accompanying Ignacio, and often a subject of his disdain is the teen aged Fermin (Yull Nunez) from the same village, who wants to learn from Ignacio and become a famous troubadour and accordion player like him.
Their journey is largely in silence (the film has no background score save for the music played by performers in the movie), Ignacio on the back of a donkey and Fermin on foot from Sucre in Colombia to Caserio Taroa in the La Guajira desert on the norther tip of Colombia.
Along their journeys Ignacio and Fermin encounter a cast of sometimes strange, oddball characters including Ignacio's brother and a woman at a small festival in a town along the way, where Ignacio plays an improvised tune, a homage of sorts to what is an old flame, throwing Fermin accompanying him on the drums into a complete tizzy about what he has to play.
There is also one scene that I found particularly compelling, a duel on accordions that reminded me of the Jugalbandi from Indian classical music or even the rap duels from films like 8 Mile.
There were two ways that I looked at the movie (and not because I saw it over two days in two parts), one in which despite the beautiful vistas not much seems to happen for stretches. Mind you the vistas are beautiful, with the gorgeous photography brings to life whether it is the lush green forests, grasslands, the rugged mountains, rivers, or the bare desert or stunningly white salt flats. They are all a joy to behold, but I digress.
The second way that I looked at the movie is the way I see it now. The silence is not just between the principals in the movie, it is also for us the viewer to think about what is said and left unsaid. The fact that it is beautifully acted, makes Ignacio and Fermin all the more human and appealing in their own ways.
It is a journey about about disappointments, hopes about losing and finding and about moving on, about the passing of the torch of sorts of traditions that are unwritten, but carried down thru generations.
This is in some ways a strange movie, but one well worth your time if you have a couple of hours to spare, where the lack of action on the screen or a traditional plot progression is not essentially a bad thing, for there is after all something to be gleaned about a journey on a road to understanding.

2010-02-16T07:00:00.001-05:00

Not A Review "Broken Embraces" by Pedro Almodovar.

This past weekend I had a chance to catch Pedro Almodovar's "Broken Embraces" (Los abrazos rotos). It is certainly not his best film, but I still enjoyed it. It did not have the emotionally depth like "Volver" but it is a layered movie, with all the Almodovar flourishes that we know him now for.. the rich vibrant colors, strong, complex female characters, sex and sensuality, a plot where most of the pivotal events of the story happen in the middle, the beginning has the consequences and a resolution of sorts at the end. And of course it has Penelope Cruz. And I have seen a few Almodovar movies, so I was able to spot other regulars like Lola Duenas and Blanca Portillo.
So what is the movie about..
A man survives a brutal car crash on the island of Lanzarote. In that accident, he loses his sight, and also Lena(Penelope Cruz), the woman he loves so dearly. That man is now Harry Caine, a with which he signs his stories and scripts. But his real name is Mateo Blanco (Lluís Homar), and he used to be a film director. But after the accident only Harry Caine lives, in a self induced amnesia and denial of what was before.
He survives thanks to the scripts that he writes, with the help of his production manager, Judit Garcia (Blanca Portillo), and her son Diego.
Before a casual sexual encounter with a woman who helps him cross the street he finds out about someone from his past who has died, Ernesto Martel (José Luis Gómez).
One night Diego has an accident and as Harry takes care of him with his mother being away. Diego asks him about the past, and the story of Mateo tumbles out.
Lena who harbors aspirations to be an actress is the mistress of this Martel, a rich, powerful financier. She meets the then Mateo during a film audition and sparks fly soon after Lena is offered a role in a film to be financed by Ernesto. The suspicious Ernesto has his gay son document the making of this film and hires a lip reader to decipher what Mateo and Lena are talking about.
The story of Mateo, Lena, Judit and Ernesto Martel is told with the elements common to a film noir.. those of jealousy, obsession, power, betrayal and guilt. Like other Almodovar films, this one is layered and one can watch the emotional layers get peeled as the story unfolds.
I liked the clarity and sharpness of the images, not in the literal sense, but in the way objects in the movie stood out, whether it was the furniture, the art on the walls, the colors (red seemed to dominate)..in complete opposition to the muddled emotional selves of the characters.
Could not help but also notice the art on the walls of Martel's mansion, the paintings of guns including one showing a rifle lowered, leveled and raised.. phallic symbolism? Power? For as powerful as Martel was, he was utterly powerless, completely captive to Lena, willing to go to tremendous lengths to keep her.
I have to try to catch some of Almodovar's earlier movies, just to see if the male characters always paled in comparison to the females. The camera here certainly loves Cruz, and her character here compared to the mother she played in Volver, is one which is more on an edge.
While I did not think this was one of Almodovar's better movies, it certainly held my attention.
Trailer below..

2010-01-05T20:58:00.009-05:00

Sin Nombre... Not A review...

While I don't often put a lot of stock in top 10 lists for the year, I do use them as a sort of a guide to see what the different critics/publications/organizations think are the top movies of the year. One such movie that I saw on a few lists and had read some good things about was "Sin Nombre".
I got a chance to finally see this movie on Netflix, available via streaming online. I was amazed at the quality of the movie online, on the HDTV it streamed with out a stutter, and the picture quality was gorgeous.
We all take our names and whatever goes along with it like our identity, for granted. But what if you had to leave it all behind whether by choice or circumstances, and undertake a journey across borders not just physical but also those of the moral kind?
Sin Nombre (Without Name) is about that, a road movie with elements of a crime thriller thrown in. It is unflinching in it's depiction of the violence and the inner workings of the real life gang Mara Salvatrucha, (and those that are caught up in it willingly or otherwise). It also about the desperation that drives people from South America to come north in the search of a better life. The destitute migrants waiting for the trains up north while camped along the tracks in rail yards are depicted with a realism, that stays with the viewer. The movie is also about heartbreak and it held my attention from start to finish.
At it's heart Sin Nombre really is about two parallel stories that soon intersect. Sayra (Paulina Gaitan), is a young woman from Honduras who joins her father and uncle a long journey thru Guatemala and Mexico. Their eventual destination is her father's family in New Jersey. The other story is involves Willy, aka Casper (Édgar Flores), a young gang member, who is inducting the 12 year old Smiley (Kristian Ferrer) in to the gang. But Casper is not as much in to the gang as his leader lil Mago ( a convincing Tenoch Huerta) would like. Casper is more in to Martha (Diana Garcia), with Smiley often tagging along during their liaisons. As a part of the initiation process, Smiley is beaten up and then commanded, along with Casper to shoot a captured street rival.
The victim is then chopped and fed to dogs. Martha meanwhile is not taking to kindly to being kept in the shadows by Casper regarding his activities and shows up recklessly at a gang meet, setting in motion a series of violent acts, culminating with Casper fleeing north on top of the freight train with Sayra and her family. Sayra and Casper form an unlikely team and share something of a bond. I do not dare call it anything else. Their fates are tragically sealed, linked as they are by Casper's singular act when he, lil Mago and Smiley board the freight train to rob the migrants.
I actually found the most chilling character to be not lil Mago, but Smiley. The hypnotic gang culture seduces Smiley and by the end of this movie, he is no longer a child.
The one other thing I noticed about the movie was its cinematography. The shots of the train and countryside are truly beautiful. I also loved how the movie open with Casper staring at a poster of a forest ablaze with fall colors, that and Martha who he loves the only things of beauty in his life.
I also liked how a couple of scenes showed the dichotomy of feelings towards migrants. Along the journey north there are children along the way who welcome the migrants on the train by tossing fruit at them, while further north children welcome them with rocks as the train passes thru.
It is hard to believe that "Sin Nombre" is the directorial feature debut of writer/director Cary Fukunaga, and I can see why he received the director's award at this year's Sundance Film Festival, which also recognized this movie's outstanding cinematography by Adriano Goldman.
The actors in Sin Nombre may no names to us, but they are all amazing, and a testament to the wonderful job they and Fukunaga have done.
I could be wrong, but this is a gritty movie, yet it felt pretty and that may be due to the cinematography. Don't get me wrong though, this is a movie worth seeing.
So what inspired Fukunaga to make this movie? An interview with him along with a trailer of the movie is here.
Also embedded below.

2009-09-06T07:19:00.009-04:00

Running..Random Musings..
Running

It has been a pain trying to do my usual runs in warm weather. But now that things are cooling off, I managed my usual 5 miler. Good to be back to running that distance again, and as the temps drop furhter, the longer I can run.

Idiocy Ascendant...
Like any other place, we in the US have our fair share of idiots and ignoramuses. Somehow the election of an African-American president seems to have driven them fucking batshit insane.
link
President Barack Obama is expected to welcome students back to school and suggest they stay in school and work hard and not to drop out of high school.
The reaction from the , has been anger and wild accusations that he’s planning to indoctrinate kids with socialist ideology.
Some even want to keep their kids out of school that day. link
And if you thought that was far out. Read this(By way of DarkSyde on DailyKos).
Evolution scares the heck out of them too... link

The shirts, which were designed to promote the band’s fall program, are light gray and feature an image of a monkey progressing through stages and eventually emerging as a man. Each figure holds a brass instrument.

And no I am not at all happy with the President with his lack of support/lukewarm support for the public option. Trying to compromise with people trying to destroy you is just a bad political move. If he drops the public option, I will likely not vote for him again, nor will I donate to his campaign when he is up for re-election.

2009-08-30T21:51:00.007-04:00

Departures (Okuribito)..Not A review -

Having watched Waltz with Bashir and Revanche and read about the The Class and The Baader Meinhof Complex I was struck by the reviewers who thought that Departures (Okuribito) was not the right choice to win the best foreign film Oscar for 2008. The class I cannot talk about, as I haven't had a chance to watch it yet but Waltz with Bashir was clearly an innovative movie with the way it used animation to tell the story of a dark chapter in Israel's history. So a part of me did wonder why some critics thought that Departures was not deserving, questioning the idea of what the academy considers to be prize worthy.
I am still conflicted, having watched 3 of these 5 nominated films. Also I feel that there are always worthy films and stay out of the whole "best movie" categorization. A movie speaks to me in different ways, at different levels based on how I feel at that moment too. I just love movies..lets just leave it at that.
On to "Departures"...
Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki), is a professional cellist who loses his job when his orchestra is dissolved due to lack of patrons. So he and his wife, Mika (Ryoko Hirosue), return to his hometown and move into the house that used to double as a bar Daigo’s mother used to run. Dead for a couple of years, and the whereabouts of Daigo’s father, who walked out on the family when Daigo was a young boy, are unknown. Eager to find work , Daigo answers an ad offering a career "working with departures". Sounds promising enough?
So he goes for an interview and, is hired almost before he sits down, at a high salary, too. There is a catch though, the "working with departures" is a misprint, the job involves working with the departed. Daigo will be preparing bodies for cremation something referred to as "encoffinment". His job is to assist Sasaki (Tsutomu Yamazaki), a dour, gruff man who owns the business who dealing with his own grief, while helping others thru their losses.
But Sasaki knows his work, it is almost akin to an art form ( the Japanese term for this is “Nokanshi"), where with the grieving family watching, the corpse is prepared for cremation..the body bathed with a cloth, dressed up and made up, all done with delicate flourishes, a spiritual concentration and a respectful grace. All of this done without the deceased body being exposed except for their extremities.
Daigo is wary of his wife finding out about his new profession, for just as those in the Indian caste system that take care of the dead were discriminated against so are these in Japan, although with time that has gone but not vanished. This we find out when Daigo encounters one of his old friends who knows what he does, and is shunned. But Mika does find out and refuses to let him touch her, leaves him for a while, to return with news that she is soon to be the mother of his child, but still wanting him to change his profession.
Daigo does ponder his own fate as well, wondering about his own calling in life, the shadow of his absent father always around him. I don't want to give too much of this plot away. But this movie is not morbid despite the premise, the Nokanashi rituals are beautiful to watch as are some of the revelations during these ceremonies, where despite the Japanese habit of restraint, things are revealed during these moments, whether they are family fissures, or the heartbreaking loss of a child or a mother, or the quite peace of sending one along with love and kisses.
Daigo and Sasaki are the gentle gatekeepers of sorts of this journey to an afterlife. Daigo's entrance to this new profession does bring out it's share of laughs, which are best experienced watching the movie. The humor translates well too, I could tell from the audiences reaction as well as from the tears.
This is a moving, sentimental film, some of the visuals from Nothern Japan are stunning and the music subdued but just right. One might say you know what might happen next, but let that not stop you from enjoying this film. The main actors are able and well cast, and the secondary characters contribute to the of this wonderful film.
I loved how the movie began with the headlights of a car signifying an arrival, and ending with a departure, one that brings catharsis for the protagonist and as a viewer, I experienced the characters joys and sorrows as well. This movie might not find a broad audience here, it was a huge hit in Japan, but I could tell from the arthouse theater audience, that is was well appreciated. The movie was shown twice this month, I missed it last time, and am glad to have been able to see it.

2009-07-26T11:48:00.012-04:00

A Return To Blogging..
Well kinda ..sorta..
I have been away a while. Probably lost what small audience I had. Why the lack of blogging? Mostly time, work has been crazy busy since end of Feb, blogs are mostly blocked at work, been on the go all the time, with little time to read or update blogs.
Having said that, I must say I have not been completely absent from blogs. I need my daily dose of political crack, so that has continued, mostly on the train on my commute. And that has about been the only reading I have done, other than the news kind.. and technical, work related, geeky stuff, which thrills me no end.. No it really does.. not to mention pays the bills, which in this economy I am pretty grateful for!
Am not sure what kind of blogging I will be able to do, maybe once a week? Or when it strikes my fancy, or I want to just vent? I find this place good for that. I am on Facebook too, but I find facebook too restrictive in the sense that, unlike this blog not anyone can read what I have to say unless they are my "Friend" Whatever that means!
Also too much background noise on there, and not very conducive to my more free wheeling spontaneous side.
So what do I have to say this Sunday?
Well been busy working, and every time I feel like taking a break take a peek at the other PC and came across the very important piece of news which at that moment CNN felt I should know.
Plus-sized TV shows find big audience

Ya I kid you not.. as if the audience for media is not fragmented enough. We now have this? Nothing against that, but CNN continues to be craptacular!
Talking about other things..
the internets I can't do without. Finally got FiOs in the neighborhood and moved to Verizon from Comcast, which always said they would get me good speed but never quite did. This ain't bad eh?

Sweet!
And in news that got this geek's interest...
Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man
link
Well we do make it easy for machines, some of us are just too friggin dumb and we make it easier for machines to look smart ;-) .. an example below..

But on a more serious note, AI has been advancing my leaps and bounds these past few years, and I wondered if we are moving close to this point..

The idea of an “intelligence explosion” in which smart machines would design even more intelligent machines was proposed by the mathematician I. J. Good in 1965. Later, in lectures and science fiction novels, the computer scientist Vernor Vinge popularized the notion of a moment when humans will create smarter-than-human machines, causing such rapid change that the “human era will be ended.” He called this shift the Singularity.

The article talk about this in some detail, and I do think we will get to that point in the near future ( if we don't manage to destroy mother earth first).
Here is the interesting part..machines simulating empathy (god those empathy haters.. republicans..their heads must be exploding!).
Here is a link to the video..

As examples, the scientists pointed to a number of technologies as diverse as experimental medical systems that interact with patients to simulate empathy, and computer worms and viruses that defy extermination and could thus be said to have reached a “cockroach” stage of machine intelligence.

Empathy for a Sick Child, From a Machine

Well that is all from me for now.. time to get back to work. Maybe I will get time to check out some of my old haunts on the blogosphere?

2009-01-16T04:00:00.006-05:00

Slumdog Millionaire
Directors: Danny Boyle , Loveleen Tandan

(co-director: India)

Writers:Simon Beaufoy (screenplay) and Vikas Swarup (novel)

Via imdb.com.. The story of the life of an impoverished Indian teen Jamal Malik, who becomes a contestant on the Hindi version of "Who Wants to be A Millionaire?", wins, and is then suspected of cheating. full summary.

I finally got to see "Slumdog Millionaire", a few weeks back but did not have a chance to put up this "Not A Review". I was curious to see this film as it has been garnering good reviews and an astonishing 135/145 reviewers on rotten tomatoes loved it giving it a 93% "freshness" rating. But that was not my only reason to want to see this movie. It literally came out of left field, making an unexpected run at and winning the 4 Golden Globes that it was nominated for.

I had some idea about the movie, but I had not read any detailed reviews. I enjoyed the movie, but I have seen other movies too this past year that I loved too.. Man on Wire, The Edge of Heaven, The Secret of the Grain, WALL-E , The Visitor and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. There are many more that I have to see. But I digress.

I can think of a number of reasons why this movie has struck a chord with viewers and critics alike, despite being in Hindi (30% of the movie?). Perhaps it is the story of an underdog, and that most of us love to root for one. I think the director, Danny Boyle has done an excellent job of adapting this story in to a movie, it helps that almost everyone knows the show "Who wants to be a millionaire", and the underlying themes transcend cultural and other differences, perhaps also explains it's success.

I do think that the first half of the movie was the stronger one in the sense that it had more of an impact on me, as it dealt with the harsh and very real and at times harrowing lives of these street kids (themes that have been handled well in other movies). The acting by the children playing Jamal, Salim and Latika was amazing, and that extends to the adults playing these and other roles too (The cast has been nominated for ensemble cast - SAG awards)
I think it was hard to work across the language barriers which Boyle did well, but it is perhaps harder to maintain a sense of continuity for the characters when they are played by 3 different actors spanning the different stages of their lives. And I think that came across really well for me.
Other than the obvious known names of Irfan Khan and Anil Kapoor most were not professional actors and it is a credit to the director that he manages to extract these great performances. One other thing that I liked was how the life experiences of Jamal are tied to his knowing the answers on the quiz show and the flashbacks do a wonderful job of setting up the character's evolution to a person that he is. I thought Anil Kapoor's performance was really good too, he does a good job playing the slick and seemingly friendly and jovial game show host while barely being able to contain himself with his not so subtle put downs of the "chai wallah".

I thought Dev Patel (he is British) gives a very strong performance as Jamal. Coming back to the second half of the movie, it was not as strong as the first half, I thought parts of it were a bit contrived or shall we say melodramatic, but I did not go in expecting anything "arthouse" like either. The the use of "D: It has been written" was a nice touch and we all know the desi/Indian thing about fate.

Did the depiction of life in Mumbai bother any of you who may know the city and be familiar with it? It did not bother me, I think movies do have some obligation to depict reality. And (I have not read the book this is based on) the director captures the grinding, stark poverty that is almost inescapable for anyone who lives in Bombay. I found the depiction of the rancid, seedy underbelly of the city to be very real. I think it was a fair portrayal.

I was reading an interview someplace with the director and he mentioned how frenetic the shooting pace was, and also often they did not get permissions to shoot till the last moment and at times none at all. And one could get the sense of how the city could close itself upon you.

I thought the movie in a lot of ways was tragic and funny, the changes of a rapidly globalizing India were well captured. The movie was also in essence a fairy tale on some levels, yet the themes of poverty, religious strife, exploitation and abandonment the characters experience are very real.

It reminded me to some extent of "The Pool" and like Chris Smith, I have to say Danny Boyle has captured the ethos of India and that in life anything is possible, perhaps it needs to be written but it would not happen without some pluck and verve and a dash of luck.

A couple of closing notes....

'Slumdog Millionaire' Hailed and Slammed in India

and the film, which opens in India next week (January 23), was just slammed by 66-year-old Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan on his blog (via The India Times): "If Slumdog Millionaire projects India as Third World dirty underbelly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations."

For a completely contrary view.. Boyle is a poverty pimp with an Avid.

Credits - I see a lot of movies and I don't often see this. No one left the theater till the credits had finished rolling. Maybe the song and dance routine during the credits had something to do with that too.

2009-01-09T05:00:00.001-05:00

A New Year..Back To My Reading
To anyone still reading this space, a very happy new year to you and your loved ones. Not a believer in new year resolutions and all that, but as 2009 began one of the things I did want to get back to was reading. While I do catch up on news and politics on the web and the newspaper, reading a book is one of the things that I truly enjoy.
The last few months of 2008 were pretty distracting what with a pivotal election and the iphone, which I used to follow the election and politics as often as I could during my waking hours. Took me away from the reading time I had on the train.
Now things are a bit quieter, and it is time to get back to reading. I was not sure what I would start reading though. These were the choices (as seen in the picture below)....

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin

The Forever War by Dexter Filkins

Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt

The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East by Robert Fisk

These are all very good books. My pick to read was "The Great War For Civilisation" by Robert Fisk. This is an author signed copy from my friend Dan. It is a huge book about 700 pages. I am on page 60 now. And I am already hooked. I hope to be able to post small synopsis of each chapter as I finish it. The Publisher's Weekly got it right I think. Here is what they have to say..

Fisk, who has lived in and reported on the Middle East since 1976, first for the (London) Times and now for the Independent, possesses deep knowledge of the broader history of the region, which allows him to discuss the Armenian genocide 90 years ago, the 2002 destruction of Jenin, and the battlefields of Iraq with equal aplomb. But it is his stunning capacity for visceral description—he has seen, or tracked down firsthand accounts of, all the major events of the past 25 years—that makes this volume unique. Some of the chapters contain detailed accounts of torture and murder, which more squeamish readers may be inclined to skip, but such scenes are not gratuitous. They are designed to drive home Fisk's belief that "war is primarily not about victory or defeat but about death and the infliction of death." Though Fisk's political stances may sometimes be controversial, no one can deny that this volume is a stunning achievement.

So how about you folks? What are you reading? Any new year resolutions?

2008-12-24T06:57:00.000-05:00

The Edge of Heaven

Life is all about coincidences isn’t it? About paths that cross or almost don’t, separated by mere whiskers of chance or often cross too late. There are ample hints of that and then some in the German born Turkish director Fatih Akin’s feature “The Edge of Heaven”. Coincidences are a valuable tool in the hands of a director, in one less accomplished they risk being trite but not so in this movie. Here an exploration of cross cultural bonds including the sameness that binds us and the differences that set us apart is done in a manner that is human, appealing, will bowl you over and yet it is done with almost an air of distance. I do not use word detachment, there isn’t any in this wonderful human drama that encompasses two nations Turkey and Germany which have many ties. Juxtaposed against the way Turkey had been rebuffed for its entry to the EU and Germany’s discomfort with its own Turkish minority this movie will feel very relevant to our times and likely stand it’s test too.

I liked that Akin does not come out for one versus the other it is likely born of his presence in dual worlds and cultures an experience a lot of us could use.

In a nutshell this film to quote the NYTime’s A.O. Scott is about..

There are six principal characters in “The Edge of Heaven”: two mothers, two daughters, a father and a son, all arranged in more or less symmetrical pairs. In the course of this extraordinary film by the German writer-director Fatih Akin (which won the best screenplay award in Cannes last year) children are lost, lost parents are never found, and generational and geographical distances grow wider.

I loved the camera work, it has done a great job of recording the myriad human emotions on the actors and also set up the moody feel that pervades this movie. I loved how it began with the camera panning across the dusty path of ground, a gas station that a car has pulled up at. Heck I thought it could be some place in Texas. But it was Turkey with the character Nejat (Baki Davrak) on his way to meet his father (as we later find out). There is a conversation here where the store attendant upon being asked by Nejat about the Turkish music playing, is told it is a local singer who “died young ..just like you”. The look that passes across Nejat’s face is it one of fear? Nejat who teaches German lit at a university in Germany is well portrayed as a guy who seems at ease in this world of two cultures. And perhaps the only time I saw a look of real joy on his face was when he walks in to a German bookstore in Istanbul. The rest of the movie we sense a wariness and a weariness to him.

The second scene is in Bremen, Germany where an older man Ali (Tuncel Kurtiz) is walking the streets in a flat cap sizing up the prostitutes along this street with its brightly painted houses. He picks Yeter (Nursel Kose) a Turkish woman working as a prostitute and after a couple of visits offers her a deal to pay her the same amount that she makes, his condition being she stay and sleep only with him. Yeter has little choice accosted as she is on the bus by a pair of Turkish men for bringing dishonor to Islam. Nejat meets Yeter at his dad Ali’s place. She has a daughter back in Turkey that she supports but has told her she works in a shoe store. Yeter meets an untimely death.. a sad accidental event at the hands of Ali, something that the viewer is forewarned with a caption at the start of that chapter of the movie.

While one might argue that letting the user know about this before hand would take away from the dramatic effect of the event, but it does not and this technique is used once again to great effect as yet another life is lost aimlessly at the hand of a child holding a weapon.

Shades of the movie babel? I was reminded of that after that scene but there is also the chronologically disordered way events unfold in the movie, some may find it confusing but I thought it served a very good purpose, it kept you thinking about what was happening.

The move shifts to Istanbul where Nejat has come with the aim of locating Yeter’s daughter, who her relatives have lost track of. Turns out Yeter’s daughter, Ayten played to great effect by Nurgul Yesilcay with her delicate looks yet an angry, forceful undercurrent has fled to Germany to escape arrest by Turkish authorities for her involvement with a radical group. Penniless and with no place to go she meets Lotte (Patrycia Ziolkowska) who is trying to find meaning in her life. She takes Ayten in to her home watched over by Susanne (Hanna Schygulla) and Ayten and Lotte become lovers. Ayten applies for asylum is denied and she is deported back to Turkey. Lotte much to the concern of her mother follows in an attempt to help Ayten. Lotte stays with Nejat as a tenant after putting up a sign at his bookstore (right above the spot with Yeter’s picture. Nejat has no recent picture of Ayten in his quest to find her and so uses her mother Yeter’s photo). The irony of this and other moments is conveyed well as being one of lost chances and near misses.

In a tragic episode Lotte dies led down the path by Ayten who sees her in prison and asks her to help retrieve something for her friends. Her grief stricken mother Suzanne arrives in Istanbul and gets in touch with Nejat with whom Lotte had boarded. They are in a way kindred souls, Suzanne is dealing with the loss of a child while Nejat bears the burden of the unsuccessful quest for Yeter’s daughter and that his father was responsible for Yeter’ death. There is this telling scene as he and Suzanne sit for dinner at an Istanbul restaurant of sumptuous Turskish dishes, and they toast.. to death. And the camera draws away to reveal the normal background noise of dinner conversations. Had they made their peace?

As Nejat goes to the seaside village where his father now estranged and deported from Germany has retired. Susanne seeks out Ayten in prison who seems pulverized by the news that she is indirectly responsible for Lotte’s death. The scenes of the grieving mother and her daughter’s girlfriend behind prison glass as Ayten tries to communicate in her broken English, the only word she seems to be able to say is sorry and ask for forgiveness which Susanne does. On release from prison Ayten returns to the book store that Nejat has left in the care of Susanne. And as they leave the store we see them pass the bulletin board without the sign with the picture of Yeter, which Nejat has removed in frustration before he last left the store.

The movie did not tie up any loose ends and I think that was ok. Life is hardly that simple. The movie did a splendid job of exploring the maps of human relationships, between father and sons, mothers and daughters and the forces that draw us close or force us apart.

Akin’s directorial skills were very obvious in some of the scenes I mentioned above, but there were many more. The scene of coffins being loaded off and on planes… Yeter’s journey back home and Lotte’s too.

There is also the scene where Ayten’s accomplices are captured and they shout out their names as the police drag them away, and the neighbors watching applaud. What are they applauding the police or the revolutionaries?

The landscapes of Turkey are well captured including the energy of Istanbul and the musical score I really loved.

I am glad I got to watch this movie, I recently also finished watching “Head-On” and can hardly wait to watch his documentary on the music scene in Istanbul.

2008-12-21T20:41:00.005-05:00

My Most Narcissitic Post!
To those of you following this blog, you know I tore an ACL in my right knee two years ago, spent a couple of months in physical therapy found that surgery was not needed and started running again.
I have been running for close to 15 years now, nothing long distance just the usual 2-3 miles 3 times a week or more or less weather permitting.
I always wondered if I could run longer regularly, but I did not try nor did I really have anything to tell me how much I was actually running, till I started using the "iMapMyRun" app on the iPhone that uses it's built in GOS functionality to tell you exactly how much I run.
This app lets me load myresults to the mapmyrun.com website where I can enter my height, weight and it tells me how many calories I burned and lets me do all the wonderful things with numers and stats. It also has routes from other runners in case I want to try out what they do.
And this app finally helped me find out if I could run farther, not sure why I needed that to know I could run longer. I suppose I liked being able to look at the app while running, it showed me distance run, time, current and average pace. And I can take screenshots!
So slowly I started increasing my distance run, thanks to the shorter hours of daylight I am only running on weekends (I cannot use a bike at home.. don't ask. I am too restless!). The Saturday is usually a shorter quicker 4 mile run and the Sunday is usually longer. So today I managed to run my longest distance yet... 7 miles! Here is a screen shot of that run.

Some of you might laugh for this is not a fast pace at all, but it is not bad for a guy who just turned 46!
I am hoping to slowly be able to up the distance, I went up from 4 to 5 to 6 and to 7 miles today.

2008-12-20T07:30:00.003-05:00

India's Anti-Greenspan or How India Avoided a Financial Collapse In It's Banking Sector

Woke up this morning and reluctantly (all the bad news) turned to the business section of the NYTimes, and was intrigued by this piece....
Talking Business: How India Avoided a Crisis By JOE NOCERA.
As the financial crisis and the real estate bubble here imploded I wondered how India was doing for it has been growing by leaps and bounds lately. Did they avoid this? How did they?
This article does provide some insights on this. India has been rightly critiqued for it's excessive regulatory policies (and rightly so at times) but this does appear to be a good example of perhaps what Alan Greenspan should have been doing.

Snippets from the article below...

“What has taken a number of us by surprise is the lack of adequate supervision and regulation,” Rana Kapoor was saying the other day. “This was despite the fact that Enron had happened and you passed Sarbanes-Oxley. We don’t understand it. Maybe it’s because we sit in a more controlled economy but ....” He smiled sweetly as his voice trailed off, as if to take the sting off his comments. But they stung nonetheless.

Yes because enough fools believed that the free market can correct or regulate itself. An unregulated free market was to make all of us rich!

Yet two years ago, the Indian real estate market — commercial and residential alike — was every bit as frothy as the American market. High-rises were being slapped up on spec. Housing developments were sprouting up everywhere. And there was plenty of money flowing into India, mainly from private equity and hedge funds, to fuel the commercial real estate bubble in particular. Goldman Sachs, Carlyle, Blackstone, Citibank — they were all here, throwing money at developers. So why did the Indian banks stay on the sidelines and avoid most of the pain that has been suffered by the big American banks?
Part of the reason is cultural. Indians are simply not as comfortable with credit as Americans. “A lot of Indians, when you push them, will say that if you spend more than you earn you will get in trouble,” an Indian consultant told me. “Americans spent more than they earned.”

So why did the Indian banking system not fail?

But there was also another factor, perhaps the most important of all. India had a bank regulator who was the anti-Greenspan.

Heh!

“He basically believed that if bankers were given the opportunity to sin, they would sin,” said one banker who asked not to be named because, well, there’s not much percentage in getting on the wrong side of the Reserve Bank of India. For all the bankers’ talk about their higher lending standards, the truth is that Mr. Reddy made them even more stringent during the bubble.
.....
Unlike Alan Greenspan, who didn’t believe it was his job to even point out bubbles, much less try to deflate them, Mr. Reddy saw his job as making sure Indian banks did not get too caught up in the bubble mentality. About two years ago, he started sensing that real estate, in particular, had entered bubble territory. One of the first moves he made was to ban the use of bank loans for the purchase of raw land, which was skyrocketing. Only when the developer was about to commence building could the bank get involved — and then only to make construction loans. (Guess who wound up financing the land purchases? United States private equity and hedge funds, of course!)

Then, as securitizations and derivatives gained increasing prominence in the world’s financial system, the Reserve Bank of India sharply curtailed their use in the country. When Mr. Reddy saw American banks setting up off-balance-sheet vehicles to hide debt, he essentially banned them in India. As a result, banks in India wound up holding onto the loans they made to customers. On the one hand, this meant they made fewer loans than their American counterparts because they couldn’t sell off the loans to Wall Street in securitizations. On the other hand, it meant they still had the incentive — as American banks did not — to see those loans paid back.

Did the bankers in India like it? No of course not!

Did India’s bankers stand up to applaud Mr. Reddy as he was making these moves? Of course not. They were naturally furious, just as American bankers would have been if Mr. Greenspan had been more active. Their regulator was holding them back, constraining their growth! Mr. Parekh told me that while he had been saying for some time that Indian real estate was in bubble territory, he was still unhappy with the rules imposed by Mr. Reddy. “We were critical of the central bank,” he said. “We thought these were harsh measures.”
“For a while we were wondering if we were missing out on something,” said Ms. Kochhar of Icici. Banks in the United States seemed to have come up with some magical new formula for making money: make loans that required no down payment and little in the way of verification — and post instant, short-term, profits.

And do we have something to learn from the Indian example?

As the credit crisis has spread these past months, no Indian bank has come close to failing the way so many United States and European financial institutions have. None have required the kind of emergency injections of capital that Western banks have needed. None have had the huge write-downs that were par for the course in the West. As the bubble has burst, which lenders have taken the hit? Why, the private equity and hedge fund lenders who had been so eager to finance land development. Us, in others words, rather than them. Why is that not a surprise?
When I asked Mr. Kapoor for his take on what had happened in the United States, he replied: “We recognize it as a problem of plenty. It was perpetuated by greedy bankers, whether investment bankers or commercial bankers. The greed to make money is the impression it has made here. Anytime they wanted a loan, people just dipped into their home A.T.M. It was like money was on call.”
So it was. And our regulators, unlike theirs, just stood by and let it happen. The next time we’re moving into bubble territory, perhaps we can take a page from Mr. Reddy’s book — sometimes it’s better to apply the brakes too early than too late. Or, as was the case with Mr. Greenspan, not at all.

Yes our regulators let it happen and the door was opened starting with the Clinton era and continued thru the Bush years (no surprise there). And American tax payers are left holding the bag.

2008-12-06T16:56:00.001-05:00

A Note (For the very few that still watch this space). Work is very busy, coupled with a lot of blogs being blocked at work and other professional pursuits, time to blog has truly become a premium. I miss reading the blogs I used to frequent, I will still try to read when I can, but this blog will now likely be more of a chronicle of things that strike my fancy or intrigue me or a place to vent. Talking about which... The Palin Rallies Seem To Have A Much Higher Preponderance Of Teh Stupid! From an oped by Gail Collins in the NYT link.

One woman at a Sarah Palin rally told The Times’s Robbie Brown that she was terrified that Obama was “going to push a socialist agenda” but that she was sure “Saxby Chambliss can stop him.” Now Chambliss has been a senator for six years, and his greatest achievement was getting ranked the 33rd best golfer in Washington by Golf Digest. It is highly unlikely that he could stop the president from doing anything beyond making a putt

Heh!

The Worst President Ever

No easy street for Bush once he's out of office

The process of relinquishing the most powerful job in the world isn't an easy one. Besides overseeing the construction of a presidential library and writing his memoirs, President Bush must also grapple with salvaging a legacy mired in the lowest presidential approval ratings in history.

Says the headline on CNNs web site. After the damage he inflicted upon this country I am not exactly worried that he has no easy street. Just go away already and spare us! If he cares about his legacy he can work with the Democrats and President elect Obama to get something meaningful done before he leaves office, even if it is not things he likes and is truly helpful for the country. That would do something for his "legacy", but knowing his track record, I am not holding my breath! And it is not just about him!

2008-11-22T21:00:00.000-05:00

Viagra.. A Performance Enhancer ?.. No Not The Kind You Are Thinking Of!
By way of the NYT, New Suspect in Sports Doping Is, No Joke, Viagra

SCRANTON, Pa. — When George Downey and other lacrosse players at Marywood University volunteered to take Viagra for a study, he received a snickering nickname from his high school coach. His parents jokingly told their friends. Inquiring minds sent messages to his Facebook page.
They’re making fun of me,” Mr. Downey, 19, said good-naturedly. “Deep down, I think they’re looking for tips.”
Except that the Marywood study does not involve the bedroom, but the playing field. It is being financed by the World Anti-Doping Agency, which is investigating whether the diamond-shaped blue pills create an unfair competitive advantage in dilating an athlete’s blood vessels and unduly increasing oxygen-carrying capacity. If so, the agency could ban the drug.

I have to admit, I did not think of the possible use of Viagra to enhance the performance of athletes, given that it dilates the blood vessels and may increase the oxygen - carrying capacity of the blood.
There are interesting points in the article about how Viagra may offer an advantage not at sea level but at an altitude, it brings to mind the Tour de France.
Either ways should be interesting.. Stay tuned.

2008-11-20T19:35:00.000-05:00

Couch Potatoes Rejoice!!!!

By way of the gadget blog Engadget comes news that soon US TiVo users will be able to order pizzas from Domino's without moving from the comfort of their couch. link

ALVISO, CA & ANN ARBOR, MI — November 17, 2008 — TV has never tasted this good. That’s because TiVo Inc. (NASDAQ: TIVO), the creator of and a leader in television services for digital video recorders (DVRs), and Domino's Pizza, Inc. (NYSE: DPZ), the recognized world leader in pizza delivery, have teamed up to give broadband connected TiVo subscribers the ability to order pizza for delivery or pick-up, and track delivery timing, right from their TV sets using the TiVo® service. It’s a service that cooks up the perfect pizza purchasing recipe.

And if while watching your film on the home theater system and munching on Pizza ain't enough and you need the chair rumbling effects to feel your film then you can get the ButtKicker . Again by way of Engadget.

The new ButtKicker Kit is a complete, consumer-friendly, do-it-yourself product for home theater and gaming that quickly and easily transforms any type of furniture to become part of an affordable "4-D" theater, allowing viewers to literally feel sound… including movie soundtracks, concert quality audio and video game explosions, bumps and thumps. As more and more families satisfy their entertainment needs in their own homes, the ButtKicker Kit will provide an exciting tactile addition to basic setups and for home theaters already equipped with HDTV flat screens, surround sound, an Xbox and a Blu-ray player. It's not expensive, but it is a first class performance upgrade.

2008-11-04T22:03:00.009-05:00

I Say It With Pride...

President Barack Hussein Obama!

I am glad to have voted for this man and been a part of history. This is a story that could only happen in America!

Right now I just want to enjoy this moment!

2008-11-04T04:26:00.003-05:00

The First Results Are In..A Sign Of Things To Come?

I hope so! By way of DailyKos

From tiny Dixville Notch, New Hampshire.. link
The town, home to around 75 residents, has opened its polls shortly after midnight each Election Day since 1960, drawing national media attention for being the first place in the country to make its presidential preferences known.
The results "My Friends" ;)
2008

Obama: 15
McCain: 6

2004:

Bush 19
Kerry 7

2000:

Bush 21
Gore 5

1996:

Dole 18
Clinton 8

1992:

Bush 15
Perot 8
Clinton 2

1988:

Bush 34
Dukakis 3

2008-10-15T07:04:00.002-04:00

The Pool
Rated: Not Rated

Runtime: 1 hr 35 mins

Genre: Dramas

Theatrical Release: Sep 5, 2008 Limited

Starring: Nana Patekar, Venkatesh Chavan, Jhangir Badshah, Ayesha Mohan

Starring:

Director: Chris Smith

I happened to catch this movie at the local art house cinema (TheaterN). This is a beautifully crafted, contemplative, drama about have and have-nots told in a quiet understated manner that resonates with the viewer. The story behind this movie is almost as interesting as the move itself. The director Chris Smith, made it after reading a short story about an Iowa graduate student who becomes obsessed with a local swimming pool. Prior to that Smith had been to India, where he met a hotel boy Raju, who despite his long, hard hours had the most wonderful disposition. Reading that short story Smith decided to port the short story to India. It is a self-financed movie, shot mostly with actors off the street. The hand held camera gives this movie a documentary like feel and captures local color and flavor in a way that Wes Anderson’s “Darjeeling Limited” did not, and trust me on that, having lived more than a couple of decades in India, I can tell when a movie captures the local ambience in an authentic fashion.

“The Pool” is about Venkatesh (Venkatesh Chavan) a room boy at a hotel in Panjim, Goa. A transplant in to the city, from the neighboring state of Karnataka, he earns his keep by doing multiple jobs at a hotel, mostly cleaning and room service. One of his routines is to perch himself up atop a tree near a hilltop bungalow, one that overlooks a swimming pool on that property. It is a shimmering, calm oasis in a world that Venkatesh can only aspire too but not have. The pool represents not just class and affluence but also something else. It will become a place that ties all the characters together, some bonds formed from the presence, while others from a past shrouded in sadness and tragedy.

Venkatesh has a buddy, a younger Jahangir (Jhangir Badshah), an orphan who is also illiterate and who like him works, but at a restaurant. Together on the side they have a business, selling plastic bags for shoppers in the street markets around town. Venkatesh has a strong desire to swim in that pool, and he slowly works up the courage to approach the owner of the house with the pool played by the Bollywood star Nana Patekar. A quiet, brooding father often seen sitting silently by the pool or gardening barely conversing with his teenage daughter played by Ayesha Mohan. She actually detests him. There is a back story here.. a family estrangement, a broken heart and something sad from their past. Venkatesh is hired by the father to work in the garden and the slow bond that develops between the two as they work in the garden together is worth watching. There are no big lines here just two people conversing. Nana Patekar as the stoic father is remarkable as is the chatty Venkatesh as he talks about his life and family back home and his desire to get to a better life by going to school although he is eighteen.

The development of the friendship between Venkatesh and Ayesha and Jhangir is also well handled. The girl recovering from a broken heart is in to young adult novels is initially indifferent to the two, but things change slowly despite the gulf between their statuses.

Ayesha and her dad’s stay at the bungalow is short and as the time for them to depart comes close, the father has taken a liking to Venkatesh and offers him a chance to go with him to Bombay where he will get to go to school and also work for him. Venkatesh has a tough choice to make, move farther away from home, leave behind Jahangir to whom he is like a older brother and friend for a chance at a better life. And what is the secret behind the pool which sits there unused, does Venkatesh get to use it?

You have to see the movie for this and the unexpected twist at the end.

Other things I loved about the movie..

Some great long takes, some wonderful crumbling Portuguese architecture, lush green Goa. I also loved the sounds of the street, simple things like the sound of a street sweepers broom, a busy market and shots from every day life. The scenes of Venkatesh and the father gardening are also well done and for me were a pleasure to watch including the simple act of cutting down coconuts from a tree and then breaking them open to drink the coconut water from the fruit. A act of pleasure which I can attest to having done it myself ages back, as is throwing stones at mangoes hanging from a tree to bring them down to eat, something the 3 kids in the movie indulge in as well.

There may be one critique about this movie, that despite dealing with issues of poverty and class it does so without any conflict, in the sense that there are no bad people in this movie. There is no outrage here but that may be an issue for those who do not know Indian society and how the various contradictions there exist side by side.

This is a warm, unhurried movie, and it at its heart it is also a story about giving and the joys of giving, that are revealed in layers as the movie progresses from one who has a lot in life and someone who has nothing.

If you are interested in the story behind this movie here is the podcast of an interview with the director Chris Smith. The movie also has a great website with a trailer and pictures and a lot more. The movie also won the special jury price at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.

2008-10-01T20:50:00.006-04:00

It is Banned Books Week! (Banned Books Week began on Sept. 27 and runs through Saturday, Oct. 4)

A hat tip to Cassandra_M at Delaware Liberal. I had almost forgotten that this week is Banned Books Week. From the ALA's (American Library Association) web site..

"Celebrating the Freedom to Read is observed during the last week of September each year. Observed since 1982, this annual ALA event reminds Americans not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted. This year, 2008, marks BBW's 27th anniversary (September 27 through October 4). "

My love of reading and books stems from my parents, folks who hardly completed high school in India. But they knew that education and knowledge would be of help to a better life. So they encouraged me to read. We were not well off so there were hardly any books at home, but during the summer vacations our school would lend us books from it's library to read for the summer. In addition my parents also let me borrow books from a local circulating library. None of this was great shakes as literature, but it was enough to trigger my imagination of worlds and places beyond my immediate environs.
And there a love of reading was born. Time does not permit me to read as much, but I still manage.

Oh and I read the newspaper everyday since I can remember going back to my childhood and I continue to do so. That is fucking more than what that empty suit Sarah Palin can say!
Oh and did you know she asked the library how she could go about banning books while she was mayor of Wasilla? link

Back to books..
Here is a list from the ALA of the top most challenged books from 2000 - 2005.
I think this piece by Carolyn Kellogg at the L.A. Times book blog says it well.

This weekend, L.A. Times books editor David L. Ulin urged us to think about Banned Books Week as more than just a celebration of challenged books that we like. "What happens when our ideals require us to defend a piece of writing that is reprehensible, that stands against everything we stand for?" he asks, continuing:
It's easy to condemn those who would remove "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" from a library, but what about "The Turner Diaries" or "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion"? Or for that matter, "Tintin in the Congo," which Little, Brown dropped from its "Tintin" reissue series last fall after controversy arose about the book's racist overtones?

These are not just academic questions; they are the heart of the matter, regardless of where you stand on the ideological divide. How do we defend one book without defending all? Such a notion can't help but make us uneasy, but then, that's one of the most essential things books can do.
If you've made your peace with defending dangerous or even heinous speech, and if you were dubbed "a brave champion of liberty" after acing the Guardian's quiz, another front remains. For the second year in a row, the American Library Assn. is celebrating Banned Books Week in Second Life — the freedom to read needs defending, it seems, in our virtual worlds too.

2008-10-01T08:33:00.000-04:00

As The Biden - Palin Debate Draws Closer..

Most of you are aware of the wonderful moose in the headlights moments that the GOP nominee for VP, Governor Sarah Palin has been having. Now, it is hard for me to believe that the GOP has found someone less smart than Shrub. But they did it!
Watch the interview and weep for America, for if elected, this woman will be a heartbeat away from the Presidency! To quote DelawareDem at Delaware Liberal, she makes Bush look like a founding member of Mensa!

Can you remember what newspapers and magazines you read to stay informed and learn about the world?

Well Ms. Palin cannot. Watch below.. make sure you have something soft to protect your head before you hit it against the desk out of sheer frustration.

Transcript via ThinkProgress:

COURIC: And when it comes to establishing your world view, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this — to stay informed and to understand the world?

PALIN: I’ve read most of them again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media —

COURIC: But what ones specifically? I’m curious.

PALIN: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years.

COURIC: Can you name any of them?

PALIN: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news.

Heh! She reads a vast variety of sources to get her news, cannot name them.
And you know what is more shocking? She is a journalism major!!!!!!!!!!!!
So is it a surprise that she could not name any major supreme court cases other than Roe v Wade! link

To me clearly Palin is completely out of her depth and for all purposes is ill prepared for the office she is running for, no wonder she has been hidden from the press while she gets "educated". But a part of me wonders if there is a component here, where the expectations are being set so low for the VP debate on Thursday, that if she does anything better than these interviews the idiot pundits will start calling it a victory!

2008-09-22T20:35:00.014-04:00

Brandywine Tasting....
For almost an year I have been part of a local wine tasting club "Brandywine Tasting". The way this works is..

Every month members of this club get together at the house of a person/s who volunteer to host. No one does not have to cook, food can be catered or purchased.
Another member/s volunteers to research and present a wine.
All the members contribute an amount towards the expense of purchasing the wine that is being presented and the food that goes along with the wine.

This wine tasting club for me has been an extremely fun, educational experience. While I am known to drink wine regularly, I could not claim to know much about wines. Being a part of the tasting club has awakened or I should say made me more aware of my palate. It has introduced me to a wonderful group of people, and helped me sample and appreciate wines from many different parts of the world (Spain, Italy, India, Chile, France, US). And it is not like it is just wine, we have had beer and Scotch tastings as well.

The tasting club has been a success in other ways too. The inaugural tasting was covered by the community newspaper. The president of the club has been interviewed on local radio and we will be featured in the next issue of Delaware Today magazine. Not bad eh?
In addition word of the club has helped us get an occasional free wine tasting. And thanks are due to Canio and Christy for doing most of the legwork to keep this club going!
I have been to almost 8 tastings so far, I am not sure why I never blogged about any of them.
Oh well so here goes...

The last tasting I went to was organized by Rob (Thanks man, I know you read this space, and you did a great job making it all happen!) and was hosted at Deerfield Wines in Newark, Delaware. This was a first for us to have a tasting hosted at a wine shop. And not just any wine shop, this was easily amongst the nicest looking wine shops that I have been too. I think if you see the attached slide show on this post you might agree. Dean the manager, was a gracious and wonderful host and the food was Tapas catered by Ole Tapas Lounge. And our wine tasting always have excellent food and this was no exception. The collection of cheeses, meats and other appetizers was a huge hit!

But the highlight of the evening was the wine. The wines featured were from Chile, specifically from the Tamaya winery. And there was to be a surprise guest! When we arrived we found out that the surprise guest was none other that Juan Pablo Martin the vintner for Tamaya wines!!! He was in the region and altered his schedule just so that he could come and do the wine presentation for us!

What followed was a very educative evening about the wines that Tamaya winery featured, as well as an excellent presentation of how the microclimates of the Limari valley and the highlands in Northern Chile are conducive to wine making. There were 5 wines presented but the ones that really stood out for me were..

Sauvignon Blanc 2006 - Clean and light. Very easy on the palate, extreemly refreshing with acidity that struck just the right balance.

Pink Goat (Rose De Syrah) A lovely pink in color. Probably the best Rose that I have tasted so far. Very smooth on the palate.

Carmenere - 2006 - The Carmenere grape while not native to Chile is now mostly found there, and it has a very interesting history that we found out that evening. From wikipedia..

The Carménère grape has known origins in the Médoc region of Bordeaux, France^[11] and was also widely planted in the Graves until the vines were struck with oidium.^[12] It is almost impossible to find Carménère wines in France today, as a Phylloxera plague in 1867 nearly destroyed all the vineyards of Europe, afflicting the Carménère grapevines in particular such that for many years the grape was presumed extinct.

Far from being extinct, in recent years the Carménère grape has been discovered to be thriving in several areas outside of France. In Chile, growers almost inadvertently preserved the grape variety during the last 150 years, due largely to its similarity to Merlot.
Thanks to Chile's minimal rainfall during the growing season and the protection of the country's natural boundaries, growers produced healthier crops of Carménère and there was no spread of phylloxera.

A similar situation occurred in Italy when, in 1990, the Ca' del Bosco Winery acquired what they thought was Cabernet Franc vines from a French nursery. The growers noticed that the grapes were different from the traditional Cabernet Franc both in color and taste. They also noticed that the vines ripened earlier than Cabernet Franc would have.

This was clearly the highlight of the evening. This wine turned out to be a pleasant surprise, wine had a deep red color, a wonderful aroma of spices and berries. More importantly the tannins were easy on the tastebuds and it was just a wonderful medium bodied wine that everyone loved. I am sure Carmenere's fascinating story had something to do with it, too but for me the wine itself did the trick.

In return for hosting the tasting, we were expected to buy at least a bottle of wine from the store. And it was not a surprise that pretty much everyone bought the wines that were presented that evening. Actually the Carmere sold out!! I think the store must have sold at least a 1000$ worth of wine after the presentation.

If you want to know more about Tamaya wines, here is a link.

All in all an excellent evening and time well spent I thought. There is a slide show of the evening for those of you interested, there is also a caption on each picture. Hover over the slide show to see each one and click on the little note icon on the menu at the bottom to turn on the captions for each slide, also have buttons to control the slide show.

Made with Slideshow Embed Tool

For those of you unable to view the slide show....

Juan Pablo Martin, the wine maker for Tamaya wines, Chile.

Excellent Tapas, catered by Deerfield wines from Ole' Tapas Lounge, Newark, DE. The Prosciutto and dips were yum!

Excellent Tapas, catered by Deerfield wines from Ole' Tapas Lounge, Newark, DE. -2

Some of the Tamaya wines we tasted for the evening.

Tamaya Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah - Reserve

The refreshing Sauvignon Blanc and the pleasant Rose de Syrah

Dude's having a blast!

A most excellent presentation!

Juan Pablo Martin (J P Martin) the winemaker of Tamaya wines flew down from Chile and changed his schedule so he could do a presentation for the club

Wines signed by the wine maker!

Folks completely taken by the presentation!

Wine, food, great company make for excellent conversations!

All eyes and ears!

Canio..that is a great pic man!

The food is always good at our wine tastings!

Alex Rivera, local expert in Chilean wines

Can I have some more of that please?

I would like to thank Canio for letting me use some of the pictures he took for this post. And if any of you local folks want to be a part of the Brandywine Tasting Club, send an e-mail to : brandywinetasting at live.com. Also check out our website at http://www.brandywinetasting.com/ We always welcome new members.

2008-09-15T13:48:00.003-04:00

Rasa Sayang.. "To Feel Love"
This is likely one of the posts that means little to anyone outside of Wilmington, Delaware. So if any of you cared enough to read and comment, I thank you for that.

Rasa Sayang.. "To Feel Love" That is the literal translation of the words. This also is the name of the Malaysian Restaurant that we stumbled upon. Located at the independence mall in Wilmington which is not really like a classic mall, but just a shopping center with a parking lot in the middle, enclosed by shops on three sides.

The original intent that day was to pick up some Indian food at the Nirvana Restaurant there. It is a generic Indian restaurant, good for a decent meal once in a while. Although their Bengali fish curry is truly good!

So as I drove in to the mall,I noticed "Rasa Sayang" a new restaurant that had just opened recently. I have had Malaysian food before in New York and Connecticut, so I kind of missed it after moving to Delaware. My impression of our state is that it is a bit provincial, but as recent experiences have suggested, there are good restaurants and one just needs to look harder I guess.

So we walked in it was not crowded as a lot of people have not heard about it being new and all. I loved the decor of the place, lots of room too!

I had a wonderful pomegranate martini, and I would try this one again!

This is their cocktail menu.

Started off with familiar appetizers "Roti Canai" (a type of flatbread found in Malaysia. It is identical to the Singaporean roti prata and a close descendant of Kerala porotta.) and "Roti Tellur" somewhat similar to Roti Canai. They are both influenced by the migration of Indians from Southern India to Malaysia.
The best part of both those dishes was the excellent dipping sauce a curry with chicken and coconut in it, that is very identical to what mom makes.

The entree was "Mee Goreng" (made with thin yellow noodles fried with onion, fried tofu, chili, vegetables, tomatoes and egg ). This dish had shrimp in it, and was easily the best part of the meal. It was spicy, tasty and truly a delight for the senses.

The other entree was "Chicken Sizzlers" Malaysian style, that was not as good as I expected. I wish they had used more spices in this one. It was rather bland.

For dessert I had "Mango Pudding". Suffice to say I won't be trying this again! But I loved the restaurant and will surely visit again to try the many dishes on there that were not familiar. Also it helps that it is a mere 10 minute drive away.

2008-09-12T04:26:00.002-04:00

Oy Teh Stoopid It Kills Me!!!!!!!!!

It is the silly season in politics! By way of Atrios from John Cole.

Sarah Palin:

Pressed about what insights into recent Russian actions she gained by living in Alaska, Palin answered: “They’re our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.”

Krista, in the comments :

And when I look out my window I can see the moon. Doesn’t make me a fucking astronaut now, does it?

Well Krista yes, but only if you are the GOP nominee for office! IOKIYAR (It is ok if you are a republican)

2008-09-10T04:02:00.001-04:00

Friday Word Of The Day "Gas"

There used to be a bit of a tradition here of doing something related (usually a poem) to the Friday blog word. This started with Mona's blog. So when I hit a phase where I could not blog, it sort of fell away. Not sure I can return to that again, but I will for this past Friday's word which was "Gas". I thought trying to do a poem around that word with it's scatalogical implications was too much for my meager poetry skills so I decided to do two different things. One is my alternative mode of getting to work which is not "Gas" based as in the prehistoric goo that runs our automobiles. Pic is of the train stop near my workplace.

And "Volatile" Is My Humble Nod To The Friday Word "Gas" as in something Gaseous.. Volatile. I will leave you my readers to interpret what I am talking about. :) Not that it might make any sense at all.

Volatile..

Would she always be so?
Free and volatile
A thing of beauty
Of an infinite expansion
That enveloped him
Too cosmic to comprehend
Yet leaving him begging for more

He would reach out
To touch her ethereal beauty
Asking for more than she could give
He could only gather
Bits and pieces
Just enough..
Just enough

To take one more hit ..
One more whiff of that
Which was so ephemeral
For an oblivion in her universe
Lighting him up yet again
In a fire that consumed him
Finally turning him to ashes
Scattering him to the
Howling winds of his desolation
Her name whispered across the great divide.

2008-09-08T06:30:00.000-04:00

End Of Summer Garden Blogging

This was the first summer we tried some vegetable gardening. Having never done this before started small, a little patch in the backyard. Nothing big. Planted Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Squash, Cubanelle Peppers, Chili Peppers and Egg Plant.

Everything went smoothly, except for the fact that stuff was planted close.. a bit too close, so that the tomato vines never allowed the eggplant to quite take off. The squash got infected by some bug. But the rest turned out fine. Part of the wonderful little bounty below.

There are still some tomatoes on the the vine.

I am really looking forward to the Chili Peppers though, these will make for some fine home made Indian pickle!

I know, could have done a lot better I guess. But I am looking forward to next year, we have a lot of room for vegetable gardening and I kinda love it.

2008-09-06T13:59:00.005-04:00

Now That My Friends Is A Smack Down I Can Believe In!!!!!!!!

California Senator Barbara Boxer, opens a can of whoopass on John McSame or McBush (take your pick), in response to that speech *yawn* by him at the RNC convention this week. By way of Daily Kos link

Last night at the Republican National Convention, John McCain used the word "fight" more than 40 times in his speech.

In the 16 years that we have served together in the Senate, I have seen John McCain fight.

I have seen him fight against raising the federal minimum wage 14 times.

I have seen him fight against making sure that women earn equal pay for equal work.

I have seen him fight against a women's right to choose so consistently that he received a zero percent vote rating from pro-choice organizations.

I have seen him fight against helping families gain access to birth control.

I have seen him fight against Social Security, even going so far as to call its current funding system "an absolute disgrace."

And I saw him fight against the new GI Bill of Rights until it became politically untenable for him to do so.

John McCain voted with President Bush 95 percent of the time in 2007 and 100 percent of the time in 2008 -- that's no maverick.

We do have two real fighters for change in this election -- their names are Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

You go Senator Boxer!

Random Thoughts

2008-09-03T20:37:00.001-04:00

Random Thoughts
- Thought I would test blogging via e-mail on the iPhone. Not sure how
pretty it will look.
- Is it just me or is Nicholas Cage in yet another forgettable movie?
Bangkok Dangerous? Only seems dangerous to those of us willing to
plunk money down to see him!
- I am maxed out with the Matrix trilogy! I saw all of them on my 14
hour nonstop flight to India.
- Those nonstop flights are cool. Will take it over the stopover in
Europe anyday.

Sent from my iPhone

2008-08-30T10:00:00.006-04:00

This just cracked me up!

Credit unknown, copied shamelessly from Hoffmania

Typical GOP logic, given the dearth of ideas, do they really think that just cuz McCain has a woman on the ticket (who is anti-abortion and has ethical issues) that women will vote for him?
That is pretty patronizing, but not a surprise coming from a party mostly dominated by white men who want the right to tell women what they can do with their bodies.

The above picture seems apt considering that McCain who is 72, is 23 years older than the state of Alaska(Sarah Pallin comes from there. It became a state in 1959).

2008-08-22T01:35:00.002-04:00

For my mum and dad...

I never thought I would post while on a visit to India. The nature of this visit (to see my folks & other family, but more the former) has given me a lot of time to reflect.
It has been hard to see my parents, they are older and more frail since I last saw them. I owe being in a better place in life to their support and their sacrifice, for which I am eternally in their debt.
There have been other regrets and disappointments, much too personal to mention here.
In a sense visiting here has been coming back to my roots, but not in a cultural sense. As important as culture is it pales in comparison to some of the more simple things that make us who we are.. our relationships with our loved ones.
I have not strayed far from my folks place this time. I can see in my mom's eyes the desire to have me spend as much time at home as possible. She hinted as much when she voiced her sadness at me not having lunch at home one day or me saying no to them wanting to make me my favorite fish curry.
I have had my disagreements with my folks before , but not anymore. It must be hard for them to be on their own with their only son so far away. I am just being around them now. Dealing with a gamut of emotions.
Exploring the city of my birth will have to wait, as will experiencing the wonderful diversity of the cuisine here.
This absent son does not want to stray far this time around. Although mum can barely stand and I can no longer sample her cooking as she is too weak to cook she will in her own inimitable style instruct the woman who comes and cooks for them to ensure that the fish curry is just right.
I have had my issues with my dad, but I have made my peace with him a long time ago. He looks after mum and the house now. I can see why he told me a few weeks back that he does not have as much strength and energy as he used to.
They are not perfect, but they are remarkable people in their own right. They have each taught me some wonderful things about love, sacrifice, hard work and about being altruistic and having a big heart.
When I leave I will do so with a heavy heart, and the hope that I can come visit them again soon.
The photograph you see is taken from where they often sit by the window of their home. It is also where I see them first when they wait for me as I arrive from the airport. It also is where I will turn and look back when I leave and there will be a tear in my eye.
Thank you Aai and Baba for being you and for everything that is right in my life.

2008-08-10T12:54:00.003-04:00

Return To Blogging?

I am not sure, things are just too busy. Oh well. Very unsettled weather here around Wilmington this Sunday morning. Lots of thunder and lightning, some hail and rain. But the worst seems to be to the South of us.
A picture of the hail from the phone camera (ya it is not the best but whatever..)

2008-07-23T04:22:00.003-04:00

Looking Presidential

By way of Ben Smith from Politico, the picture below says it all. I will let the sign on the golf cart say it all for McSame. ;).

2008-07-19T15:59:00.006-04:00

Random Shots...

Snoop Dogg In A Bollywood Video? Cool Eh? Fo' Shizzle Mah Nizzle
Found this interesting tidbit, by way of the blog "icravebollywood.com". I don't particularly crave Bollywood (the Indian version of its not always illustrious counterpart here). But this got me curious so I checked out the music video, and I kinda liked it. :)
Snoop as a Sardar? :)

Video below

2008-06-28T07:26:00.010-04:00

Saturday Musings...

My musings have almost died down, partly a function of blogs being blocked at work, long work days and too much going on.

So inspiration strikes this Saturday morning and out comes the stuff below...

I want to start blogging and read at least a few blogs everyday. Lets see how that goes. I will get around the blog blocked thingy once I get me a new iphone. ;-) Not to mention be taking the train a lot more with lot of time to read what folks have to say and ofcourse read books.

Talking about reading.. started reading

Oil on the Brain: Adventures from the Pump to the Pipeline by Lisa Margonelli
Just finished the first chapter, this is a good read and seems so relevant these days with high gas prices and all. What you did not see it coming? Some people did. I am looking at 200$ a barrel at some point. Been reading the posts of Jerome a Paris for a while now on Daily Kos for a while now. He has been talking about this for a couple of years now and scary part is it is coming out to be true. He works in the energy banking sector knows what he is talking about. That link explains it way better than I could here. To those who think prices will come down .. two words "ain't happening"!

One of the neighbors across the street has a bumper sticker on her SUV "Nobama". Heh! Guess they ain't fans of Obama. Saw a "McCain" bumper sticker too on the SUV and the other mini-van. Guess they finally got fed up of seeing the Obama placard in our window and the sticker on the car. Sadly the neighbors are outnumbered two houses on either side of us got Obama gear on their cars. ;-)

And Rob, if you are reading this.. good time to be voting democratic you know? :)

Nice Ad (No it is not an ad for a face lift) :-)
By way of advert-eyes

To quote Zed the author of the blog where I found this ad...

By showing some bad results from people that had plastic surgeries, they are telling us that only the creators of a product know how to fix it properly. Maybe meaning god in these examples (I don't think it means the parents) ;-) The copy reads exactly: "If it's not fixed by the one who made it, it probably won't work. Nobody knows better your Chevrolet than its creators."
Client: Chevrolet
Agency: McCann Erickson, Buenos Aires
Creative Director: Papon Ricciarelli / Chavo Demilio
Copywriter: Rodrigo Polignano
Art Director: Mariano Legname

2008-06-08T21:30:00.004-04:00

No Reason Post..

When I watched the trailer for the Mike Myer's movie "The Love Guru", I was cracking up. I found it hilarious.

I don't always like Bill Maher, but I will watch "Religulous"

Those McCain supporters sure look energized!

2008-06-02T20:48:00.006-04:00

Little India restaurant: Chicken Sutra

Yes.. I kid you not! What you see below is an ad by McCann Erickson for an Indian restaurant in Geneva. By way of Scaryideas.com and copyranter

I don't know about you, but seeing an ad with headless chickens making out does not get either my digestive or any other juices flowing!

2008-05-28T04:23:00.005-04:00

Gas Prices?

The image below by way of this post by Meteor Blades (hat tip to A. Siegel for the graphic) at Daily Kos says it all. Some people going to desperate lengths for gas...

^{As gas prices soar, thieves grow more brazen.}

...police in Denver are investigating a rash of of incidents in which thieves drill small holes into gas tanks and siphon off the fuel. "This is clearly not the way it’s been done in the past, by taking a hose and putting it in a gas tank," police Detective John White said.

Damn!

WTF indeed, as someone pointed out oil was about $33 before this stupid war in Iraq began it is past $133 now. The war has cost at least a Trillion dollars (direct and indirect costs) and I guess the folks who said the war would be paid for with Iraqi oil money are awfully fucking quiet now.

2008-05-26T20:32:00.008-04:00

Funny Ads

Cos I don't have much else to say. I don't think I picked the best time to come back from my break. Work this week will be busier than ever. I had resolved to start reading more blogs, but most of today was spent working at home, logged in to my workstation, perhaps later this week. Trying to get a jump up this week, hopefully it makes for a less stressful week at work than last. We shall see.

Cool ads eh?

Sharmila's Yoga Zone: Directions (Advertising Agency: Mindset Advertising, India)

Venus (Via adsoftheworld.com)

Heh Heh Moment..
Via Talkingpointsmemo

A planned mega-fundraiser for the GOP, featuring President Bush and John McCain, has now been scaled back in the face of a daunting problem: Too few people actually wanted to buy tickets.

According to the Phoenix Business Journal, the fundraiser set for this Tuesday in the city's convention center failed to sell enough tickets, leading to fears that the anti-Bush protesters might end up outnumbering actual attendees.

The new plan is for the Bush-McCain fundraising effort, which will benefit both the McCain campaign and the RNC, to be held in private residences in the Phoenix area away from media coverage.
Pic by way of Watertiger
Quite chummy eh?

2008-05-21T04:05:00.006-04:00

Kind Of Sort Of Back...

I can't access blogs at work so any downtime I had can't be used for that. And with my long commute and limited time, I guess I could do a post a week and gradually keep up with the rest of you wonderful folks and your blogs. So I am kinda sorta back.

How are ya'll doing? Spring treating you well?

From Attaturk of firedoglake.com

We've observed George Bush for seven years, four months now...88 long months. There are many things I have learned to expect from him. All bad, and all about feeding the massive George Bush ego. John McCain will not be allowed to separate himself from Bush, even if the former had the inclination to do so. If McCain runs for President, he'll do it on the Decider's terms.

I predict, the 2008 GOP Convention is going to be George Bush's love note to himself. It's possible we will see John McCain read badly from a teleprompter at some point...and yelling at a cloud.

I like this one from a diary at Kos

As has been pointed out McCain would just be an extension of Bush.

2008-01-15T04:00:00.000-05:00

Hiatus

I am taking a break. Things are too busy right now at work and outside of work. I hope to be back sometime. Thank you for reading and commenting. I hope you all have had a good start to the New Year.

2007-12-24T07:13:00.001-05:00

Wishing you folks a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!!!!

Pic found via a google image search sourced from Larissa's blog

2007-12-12T04:00:00.000-05:00

Darwin’s Nightmare (2004)

Director: Hubert Sauper

Writer: Hubert Sauper

Genre:Documentary

Runtime: 107 min

Official website: http://www.darwinsnightmare.com/

I finally managed to watch Hubert Sauper’s Oscar nominated documentary Darwin’s Nightmare I had the DVD for about 2 months from Netflix). This is really a “must watch” documentary.

The idea for this documentary was born during Sauper’s research on another documentary KISANGANI DIARY that follows Rwandese refugees during the Congolese rebellion.

In 1997, I witnessed for the first time the bizarre juxtaposition of two gigantic airplanes, both bursting with food. The first cargo jet brought 45 tons of yellow peas from America to feed the refugees in the nearby UN camps. The second plane took off for the European Union, weight with 50 tons of fresh fish.
I met the Russian pilots and we became "kamarads". But soon it turned out that the rescue planes with yellow peas also carried arms to the same destinations, so that the same refugees that were benefiting from the yellow peas could be shot at later during the nights.

At some point in the 60’s someone introduced the “Nile Perch” (It is one the largest fresh water fish capable of growing up to six feet and weigh almost 200 kg about 440 lb) a fish that is not native to Lake Victoria in Tanzania as a kind of scientific experiment. The perch is a fierce natural predator and has since taken over the lake and can be held responsible for causing the extinction or near-extinction of several hundred native species especially the native cichlids. In the face of the declining numbers of cichlids, in a macabre twist it has now taken to devouring its own young. So while the perch has destroyed native species it has given rise to a booming commercial fish industry almost completely dependent on the perch, a fish so expensive that the Tanzanians cannot afford it, but is made in to filets and exported to European markets with a huge appetite for the fish.

Saupert armed with a hand held camera and the barest of narration, documents the lives and conditions under which they live and work. The documentary is framed by the arrival and departure of gigantic Soviet made cargo planes, at an airport in Mwanza, Tanzania along Lake Victoria. Each plane will carry 55 tons of perch fillets processed by a local factory and caught by local fishermen.

Saupert examines the economy and ecology around the lake. As the documentary unfolds we learn of the famine in Central Tanzania which causes migration of people from the hinterlands to the lake. The people working in the industry around the fish settle in one of “thousand islands” working colonies which consist of young fishermen and prostitutes from the back country who work amongst them and call themselves as girlfriends of the many “pilots” of the planes that fly out with perch filets.

Particularly touching is the story of Eliza who is a girlfriend to many pilots (photo is of hers from the documentary), who wants to get out and go to school. She is killed by an Australian client of hers.

There also those here afflicted with the scourge of AIDS who have nowhere left to go but back to their homes to die.

These aren’t the only players that we get to meet, we see the fish factory managers, African ministers, street children some of whom are fighting over scraps of food cooked from the skeletal remains of perch and getting high from sniffing the melting plastic containers used to pack the fish and EU officials all interested in furthering this trade in fish. I have seen a lot of poverty in India but that scene of the children fighting over the scraps of food just broke my heart.

But these are not the only scenes in the movie that will grab you, there are shots of rows of fish heads sticking out of the ground, rotting skeletal remains of the fish being hung out to dry, or being eaten after cooked in open air pits and also serving as make shift toys. There are shots of the remains of some planes on the banks of the lake Victoria that were so overloaded with fish that they could not make it out. The natural shots of the lake are stunning and for a moment lulled me to the nature of the ecological disaster within its waters.

Saupert’s movie is a visual masterpiece because it does not have much of a narration. It lets the story reveal itself thru the riveting images of the people simple conversations and of landscape in a place where all their lives are tied to this fish.

“Darwin’s Nightmare” is a harrowing look at the human cost of untrammeled globalization, which does not leave anyone untouched and is meant to appeal to our conscience. I will quote Saupert’s words to end this post..

The old question, which social and political structure is the best for the world seems to have been answered. Capitalism has won. The ultimate forms for future societies are "consumer democracies", which are seen as "civilized" and "good". In a Darwinian sense the "good system" won. It won by either convincing its enemies or eliminating them.

In DARWIN’S NIGHTMARE I tried to transform the bizarre success story of a fish and the ephemeral boom around this "fittest" animal into an ironic, frightening allegory for what is called the New World Order. I could make the same kind of movie in Sierra Leone, only the fish would be diamonds, in Honduras, bananas, and in Libya, Nigeria or Angola, crude oil.

2007-12-06T06:00:00.000-05:00

Bolivia.. Not a movie review.

Bolivia (2001), Argentina, Director: Adrián Caetano

Bolivia is a bleak, gray movie shot in black and white with a grainy look to it, which I thought just added to the mood of this absorbing movie. It examines the intersection of anger, poverty, and harsh economic conditions that almost always bring xenophobia boiling to the surface.

The setting is the somewhat rundown Parrilla restaurant in Buenos Aires, Argentina in the days of that nation’s economic crisis that began in the end of 1999. (link) but it could be anywhere in the world. Adrián Caetano's direction coupled with the excellent camera work make this rather simple story that revolves around the lives of characters at the bottom rung of the ladder in society gripping, human and yet horrifying.

The movie opens with a sign on the window “Cook Wanted”. The owner is the brusque Enrique (Enrique Liporace) who hires Freddy (Freddy Flores) a poker faced immigrant who has just arrived from his native La Paz, Bolivia, for 15 pesos a day. While the movie opens there is also a soccer game on between Argentina and Bolivia, with the latter being thrashed on the field and trashed by the announcer for their poor defense. This was an allegorical moment in this movie, laying the setting for a nationalistically tinged dismissive attitude towards the Bolivians that is then repeated in the movie in numerous ways that the camera captures brilliantly. “Bolivia” has an understated way of stating its case and uses a no frills approach that works for it surely had my attention.

The livelihood of Freddy is tied to that restaurant, as is that of another immigrant Rosa (Rosa Sánchez), who is hit upon by many customers of the cafe and being Paraguayan also the recipient of slurs, that she deals with a calm face, but has none of the wariness of the more recently arrived Freddy. I wondered if that was her “been there ..heard that one before” weariness hidden beneath a peaceful looking exterior.

The restaurant is a place to eat and commiserate and for those struggling on the margins of society in their own country a lifeline of sorts. It is that for the down on his luck Oso (Oscar Bertea), who is broke and almost going under and relies on Enrique for food and drink on his steadily growing tab. Freddy is an easy target for Oso, but also for pretty much any one else who chooses to pick on him. It takes the form of the very telling looks of the guys who are running an unauthorized telephone call center when they know where he is from, to the two policemen who stop Freddy the first night after work, who are openly disdainful of him.

That first night Freddy goes to sleep in another restaurant paying a peso for his coffee and begins another day filled with cleaning tables, working the grill and enduring the hostile stares and words of customers who resent the fact that Freddy an interloper gets to work while they, the citizens of their country struggle. Lest you wonder that there are no tender moments in the movie, there are.. the brusque Enrique while exploiting them for the cheap labor does have his nice side and Rosa and Freddy after a night out, come together in a frenzied, desperate intimacy born of people who are both outsiders in that country.

The movie ends in a stunning climax where all the resentments that have festered just boil and explode in one life altering moment. The movie ends as it began, with Enrique seen putting up a sign “Cook Wanted” on his restaurant window coming a full metaphorical circle, about the lives of those that are often invisible at the margins of society.

2007-11-28T18:59:00.000-05:00

"Outsourced" Not a movie review

It has been almost two weeks since my last post..sheesh! Oh well.

Director:

John Jeffcoat

Writers (WGA):

George Wing (written by) &
John Jeffcoat (written by)
Rated PG-13 for some sexual content.

Runtime:

USA:103 min (theatrical version) / Canada:98 min (Toronto International Film Festival)

A couple of weeks ago I managed to catch the independent movie "Outsourced" at the TheaterN in Wilmington. I absolutely loved the movie. Here is a link to the movie's website, the producer Tom Gorai has a facebook site too! link

If you believe that indie cinema is good for you and you want to try and spread the word about this film and try to see if you can get it screened in your area, here is a link to what you can do.

Trailer of the movie and my "Not A Review" after that.

"Outsourced" begins when a Seattle call center manager ,Todd (Josh Hamilton) is told he is being downsized, his only option is to go to India as a consultant to train the call center people there, in things like sounding "American" and to try and get the MPI (minutes per incident) on the phone down to 6 minutes from the 13-15 minutes they were spending per customer.

Todd has little choice, he has no interest in going to India, so naturally it is not going to surprise you to see Todd go thru all the things that people fighting something undergo especially in a place he does not want to be in initially. The cultural and other differences are almost overwhelming for Todd (he misses the guy who has come to pick him up because the sign he is holding up for him is misspelled as "Toad" instead of "Todd" and he misses him in the crush of humanity outside the arrival area. On his own Todd manages to reach the town of Gharapuri away from Bombay where he finally meets Puro (shortened from Purohit) played by Asif Basra the "future" call center manager. He convinces Todd to stay at his aunt's place rather than at the only hotel in town as he will be looked after better and the food and water will be hygienic.

Todd agrees reluctantly and is educated in a few more of the differences when his hosts get shocked that he eats with his left hand and gets a demo about why that is not done, this was pretty hilarious. He also gets grilled about not being married (is it because he is gay?), no living with his parents and not seeing them often. Todd being American does not have as strong a sense of his identity as do the Indians around him especially when it comes to family ties and social obligations.

Todd's goal to improve the MPI is helped both by Puro but even more by the smart, charming and outspoken Asha (played brilliantly by Ayesha Dharker) his best employee who has a crush on him. She asks Todd why it's necessary for Indian call-center workers to pose as Americans while selling cheap junk made in China (Made me crack up!).

He is however not challenged by his job and has a tough time believing that the employees like some of the tacky stuff their company sells, but his transformation has slowly begun. While on an impulsive trip to a McDonald's knockoff he meets a fellow American who offers him a simple bit of advice "I was resisting India. Once I gave in, I did much better".

His transformation is complete when he takes a dip in a local water tank (that he overlooks from his host's house) following his dousing with colors after the Indian festival of Holi. I could not help but notice the metaphorical reference here to baptism and to a spiritual meaning attached to the cleansing of oneself in water something prominent in Hinduism as well.

As Todd and Asha draw closer he comes to understand India better. He comes to understand the circle of preservation, destruction and creation as exemplified by Kali. He also find out about the significance of the Shiva lingam and the Yoni, the oneness of and the complimentary nature of the male and the female, through his interaction with Asha. Dharker is brilliant here and in several more scenes. Certain things are not as easy to talk about for her and her inner conflict, her reticence and her intelligence and outspokenness and the feelings that Todd evokes in her are portrayed very well by Dharker with her expressive features and body language.

Asha in a lot of ways exemplified the changing face of the Indian woman who, thanks to education and economic freedoms appears to be stepping out of the box that tradition and culture create for her. She is engaged to be married to a guy from a family (that her family knows for generations) since she was a child, and in Todd she sees someone who will let her express her freedom. So is what they feel for each other love?

Asha explains to him that given the cultural background that this time with him is like a "Vacation in Goa". He asks her if that is all he means to her a vacation? Asha responds to him, tears in her eyes "You are the only vacation in Goa".

I thought this was a more honest portrayal of a modern Indian woman than one often sees in some of the Bollywood movies. Where do Todd and Asha go from here? There relationship has something deeper in it and I would let you watch the movie to figure that one out.

There are quite a few funny moments in the movie including one where the Indian and American words for an eraser had me in splits. Indians call an eraser "rubber" which causes confusion with their American customers. "Rubber" is slang for a condom as Todd tells them, much to the chagrin, shock and amusement of the Indian employees. The funniest part was when one of them looks at it and wonders aloud "How does that work?" Look for a hilarious scene where Asha does the American accent and Todd the Indian way of talking, including the shake of the head (Clip below).

The movie has captured India very well, and everything about India as we see in the movie is genuine..the taste, culture, sights (you can almost get the myriad smells of the place too) , the people and their humanity.

I thought the director John Jeffcoat, does a great job here in how he uses a light hearted movie to portray the different cultural nuances on both sides, their effects on love, work and friendship. He also examines the effects of globalization on people and their sense of identity.. personal, cultural and national. He does it in a light hearted manner using humor and some astute observations that make the message subtle but a very important one.

Events in the movie reflect the reality that the individual on all sides of this issue is powerless before the economic forces. Traditional values and notions do get questioned and change is scary but it is often how one reacts to change that matters what the movie is saying to its audience and that the call is to be pragmatic about it.

This is one heck of a charming movie.

Hilarious clip from the movie where Asha and Todd imitate each others ways of speaking (American and Indian).

2007-11-14T04:04:00.000-05:00

The Jane Austen Book Club (Not A Review)
Rated PG-13

1 hr 46 mins

Drama

I went to this movie not quite knowing what to expect, all I knew was it had a 68% rating and it was about a book club. I was I would say it is one of those movies that has its funny moments and this one of those light hearted movies that are easy to watch. This is not meant as a back handed compliment, the movie is very enjoyable.

And one does not need to be familiar with Jane Austen to be able to “get” this movie, although knowing some of the details about characters like Mr. Darcy would surely help. I have read four of the six Austen books but that was years ago, and other than “Pride and Prejudice” I don’t remember much about the others. However this did not prevent me from enjoying the movie.

This movie is about a book club that focuses on books by Jane Austen over a period of six months covering her 6 books. The club has six members and is founded by Bernadette (Kathy Baker) who has been married six times. The club is an attempt to help her friend Jocelyn (Maria Bello) who is dealing with the loss of her dog and no man in her life. The other members of the club are Prudie (Emily Blunt) a high school French teacher and her husband (Marc Blucas) with whom she seems to be growing distant. This is further complicate by a growing attraction between her and one of her high school students with whom she seems to be falling in love.

Sylvia (Amy Brenneman) is soon to be divorced by Daniel (Jimmy Smits), and has no idea that something is wrong with her daughter. Sylvia's lesbian daughter Allegra (Maggie Grace), appears to be in love with her friend and all seems well there. Prudie's mother (Lynn Redgrave), an ex-hippie dominates her life and casts her shadow across it even when she is not there.

The sole male member of the club is Grigg (Hugh Dancy), who appears to have made his money in software and has never read Austen but has a thing for science fiction. Jocelyn attempts to pair off Sylvia with him. What Jocelyn does not see is that Grigg has a thing for her instead. In this respect Jocelyn does seem like an Austen heroine in that she is blind to true love that is staring her right in the eyes.

The members meet at each others homes and these moments are inter-cut with scenes of them reading the books. While these may not seem much to viewers, I mean how else do you convey to the viewer that the characters are enjoying reading the book? But there lies the charm of the movie. All the meetings coincide with emotional upheavals in the lives of the characters, Daniel realizes how much he loves Sylvia, Allegra breaks up with her lover, Jocelyn starts to realize what she feels for Grigg and Prudie stands at a crossroad (figuratively and literally) as she is about to make one of the most significant decisions of her life.

What I loved about the movie was how in many ways the romance, emotional lives of the characters paralleled those of Austen’s characters. Also loved how the characters would obliquely refer to those events while talking about that particular Austen book either to buttress or rebut a point. We watch as these characters evolve over the course of the books and I for one was very curious to find out how it ended.

Some might refer to this movie as a chick flick. I kind of don’t like using that term for it implies that there is nothing of substance in the movie for men, and I strongly disagree. The movie is akin to curling up to read a comfortable book and the lessons about life and love from Austen’s books are timeless as can be attested to by how popular they continue to be.

2007-11-06T11:30:00.000-05:00

A Schmooze Award (or two) & "Down The Nile" Not A Book Review

I have been awarded the "Schmooze Award" by Lotus Reads (Thank you my friend!) and Naina Ashley (Thanks!).

About the award :- This award is for the bloggers who “effortlessly weave their way in and out of the blogosphere, leaving friendly trails and smiles, happily making new friends along the way. They don’t limit their visits to only the rich and successful, but spend some time to say hello to new blogs as well. They are the ones who engage others in meaningful conversations, refusing to let it end at a mere hello - all the while fostering a sense of closeness and friendship.”

Down the Nile: Alone in a Fisherman's Skiff (Hardcover)
by Rosemary Mahoney

Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Travel never makes one cheerful. But it makes one thoughtful. It washes one’s eyes and clears away the dust.

With this take on Gustave Flaubert’s quote from one of his travels on the Nile, ends Rosemary Mahoney’s wonderful travel memoir about her solo trip in a rowboat down the Nile from Aswan in Egypt. While this might not seem like a big deal in itself, consider the fact that Egyptian women are never seen rowing on the Nile and tourists are not allowed for their own safety and that makes her feat all the more impressive.

However it is not this mere fact that is notable (the author is a self described loner), Rosemary Mahoney is an excellent chronicler of the sights, sounds, her feel of and for the people and places that she encounters. She has a keen eye for all these and a talent for narrating her experiences in vivid and rich layered detail. She integrates her own sense of the place very well with historical narratives from two Victorian era explorers Gustave Flaubert (more known for his novel “Madame Bovary”) and Florence Nightingale (who I only knew about for her achievements as an pioneer in nursing, something I remember from my days in school) who were also on the Nile at around the same time. The past is so seeped in to the earth of this place and is borne out in lines such as those when the author writes about being “startled by the sight of a mummy’s linen-wrapped skull and shoulders poking out from the side of a mound of dirt” and of stepping over old bones and pieces of pottery.

The author has to buy a boat to begin her rowing trip, and while that does not seem like a big deal, it is a big thing in the male dominated culture of Egypt where women are just not seen as doing certain tasks. The men do want to help her, by dissuading her from her quest with reactions that range from disbelief, to offering to row for her as that is too far for her to go. She even comes up with an excuse to make this job of buying a boat easy, coming up with the boat being a gift for a fictitious husband!

And she does tire of the constant questions, the ridicule, the banter, the haggling over money, the stares, the declaration of love, flirtation and desire to have sex with her and requests for money from most of the men that she encounters. But while this is tiring for her on one level she also feels sad for the state of some of these men for being caught as they are due to their circumstances and geography, in a culture that permits no intermingling of the sexes. And their cheap come hither is often comical and sad as the men invariably turn to talking about sex.

There are a couple of interesting conversations that she has with Egyptian men including a male prostitute Ahmed in his 20s, in Luxor whose clientele consists of mostly older women who are foreign tourists. This was very instructive in many levels and provided a glimpse in to that strange world where some Egyptian men think nothing of providing sex for money but are willing to kill an Egyptian woman who could be their sister but who may not be a virgin prior to marriage.

At the end of this book is her chilling encounter with Mahmoud a poor fisherman who pursues her one moonlit night that suddenly turns ominous after he startles her while she is asleep in her boat just before Qena her final destination. What is it that he really wants and Rosemary’s reaction to him are very instructive about the gulf between two people owing to difference in culture, language and gender.

But not all men in this book are the same, the one that stands out is Amr, a Nubian so unlike most Egyptian men in his reserved, polite manner reflected in his offer for Rosemary to take his boat, no questions asked.

The development of the friendship between the author and Amr despite their many differences is heartwarming. But despite being different he too is very much a part of his milieu for in his view women should be at home too “Nubian way from long time ago. ... Nubian woman should not be doing nothing. Nothing. They should only be staying home and minding the house.”
We get to meet his beautiful sister Hoda, who will likely be condemned to being a spinster owing to a deformed foot. Your heart will also go out to Safaa who Rosemary encounters working at a hotel (with her propensity to use the word “Crap”) who tells her “Rose, I tell you. I wish I could be free like you.

Mahoney excels at her narrative especially as she rows down the river and her description of it, the lands around it are vivid enough that you can actually feel the strength of the river, its calm and the history that it has witnessed and been a part of. The searing heat and the wild exotic birds are as very much a part of her journey, especially the heat which Mahoney brings very much to life with prose like…

The heat was borderline equatorial; it asserted a heavy downward pressure. Dogs and humans felt under duress here, flattened and exhausted and flayed. When I removed my hat, the sun had made the top of my head sting in a vivid, concentrated way – it was like having a freshly baked nail driven into my skull.

I enjoyed reading this book and the part that I got bogged down was the part where the author seems to take forever to find the boat, but now that I look back I think I was feeling what the author felt as she was badgered and tired by the countless questions from the fishermen about why she wanted a boat.

The distance Mahoney covered and how she did it may not rank up there in terms of solo adventures, but I found that the well worn adage “Focus on the journey, not the destination” to be particularly true after reading this fine book.

2007-11-02T07:41:00.000-04:00

Militants Draw New Front Line Inside Pakistan

I read the above headline and the attached article in today’s NYTimes with some trepidation and concern.

November 2, 2007
Militants Draw New Front Line Inside Pakistan
By JANE PERLEZ
PESHAWAR, Pakistan,
Nov. 1 — For much of the last century, the mountainous region of Swat was ruled
as a princely kingdom where a benign autocrat, the wali, bestowed schools for
girls, health care for everyone and the chance to get a degree abroad for the talented.
Now the region is the newest front line in the battle between Islamic militants, who are sympathetic to the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and Pakistan’s nervous security forces. For the first time, heavy fighting has moved beyond Pakistan’s tribal fringe and into more settled areas of the country.
….
The battles are part of what has become an expanding insurgency within Pakistan, aimed directly at the government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the president, rather than at the NATO and American forces across the Afghan border who have been the target for several years.
Many here say the militancy is fueled by anger over the government alliance with the Bush administration and what is seen as a pro-American agenda that has grown in prominence with the return of the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. She has accused the militants of trying to take over the country.
The conflict in Swat reflects many of the reasons Pakistan has become such a
dangerous place in recent years: the aggressiveness of the militants, the passivity of the government and its security forces, and the starved civilian apparatus, including schools and hospitals, which has failed to provide the backbone for a counterinsurgency strategy.

With the Iraq war costing upwards of 200 million a day (not to mention the cost in lives and the indirect costs like interest on borrowing and care of the wounded) and the saber rattling with Iran, and an overstretched military, I am afraid we again continue to ignore the peril of what is going on in Pakistan.
I could go on but I am just frustrated at the state of affairs and the fact that things may not change soon.

2007-10-26T04:00:00.000-04:00

Once “Not A Review”

You would think that if you saw a movie that so thrilled and captivated you, its music, characters, story touched you so deeply (even when you have a bit of a tin ear for music like I do) and you thought that it was easily the best film of the year that you had seen so far, you would talk about it right?

But not me, for some reason that I could not fathom and seems just out of reach, I did not write about it. I have gone back to this movie often in my thoughts marveling at it and hearing the songs in my head, and before the fog of time completely obscures my recall of this gem of a movie, I better talk about it. I caught this movie at the Newark film festival almost 2 months ago and it has stayed with me for a while.

Once is a delightful Irish movie and won the world cinema dramatic audience award at Sundance this year and rightly so. The movie is brilliantly directed by John Carney and is a clear testament that a really good movie even one that is a musical does not need the slick, expensive production numbers like say “Dreamgirls”. Shot mostly on the street and indoors with a few scenes of the glorious Irish coast, the power of this movie comes from the two principal characters in the movie whose names are never mentioned. The “guy” is played by Glen Hansard, lead singer of the Irish group “The Frames” and the “girl” by Marketa Irglova a Czech musician he has worked with in the past.

The “guy” is a street singer performing songs for spare change, in fact when we first hear him sing he seems ordinary yet earnest as he strums his guitar singing a brand of pop that is full of songs of heartbreak and stylistically more like folk. He has recently broken up with his girlfriend a fact that is elicited out of him by the “girl” who happens to chance upon him on the street. She is a recent Czech immigrant, a mom and is living with her mother in a cramped apartment and she sells flowers and cleans homes for a living. She speaks English with an accent that I found adorable especially the way she added “yeah” at the end of some of her lines that seemed like part question, part looking for affirmation, her direct nature and inquisitiveness a charming contrast to his reticent openness.

His day job is helping out in his dad’s vacuum shop and he helps her fix her vacuum and makes a half hearted pass which is rejected very bluntly, and so begins the formation of a bond between two people.

On the way to the repair shop he tells her his story and sings about being "a broken-hearted Hoover fixer sucker guy." A sucker because his girlfriend was cheating on him with another guy.

The girl is a musician too (she plays the piano) and the only chance she ever gets to play the piano is on a demo model at a music showroom. The guy comes to hear her, his guitar in tow and so enthralled with her playing that he asks her to team up with him on one of his songs. It was at this point that the movie completely captivated me. Watching them piece together the beautiful, heart tugging “Falling Slowly” is sheer magic and is a movie moment that you won’t forget.

(Here is a youtube video of the song from the movie courtesy of FoxSearchLight pictures). More videos at the movie web site too.

The camera does a great job of setting up the stage and letting the two principals work their magic thru their music and chemistry and uses the peripheral characters brilliantly (like the way the store owner notices the pair playing). There is an intimacy that is born of small, simple moments and I fell in love with these two characters at the same moment they fell in love with each other.

What makes this movie all the more impressive is that neither of the two are professional actors, which brings a welcome freshness and prevents it from being overtly sentimental. There is no big message in this movie, the high point is making of a demo tape, but it is about approaching the challenges of life with good humor, determination and desire.

The movie has great music (that is unpretentious) and songs, combined with the great cast, this is one film I will add to my permanent collection and will watch it more than once.

Yes, this is a love story but one which will end happily but not like you expect it to, and as the New York Times film critic A.O. Scott put it so eloquently in his review “Some Love Stories Have a Better Ending Than the Altar”. I just loved everything about this movie!

2007-10-24T04:00:00.000-04:00

Cool Ads.. Have A Good Laugh..

Fancy Some Canned Silkworms?
Via Wired

Eclipstore: Double opaque shutters
Via adsoftheworld.com

Build Strong Teeth
Via adsoftheworld.com

Oh Those Innovative Japanese.. (link)

Japanese Manufacturer Introduces New Portable Toilet for Vehicles
A company in Japan called Kaneko Sangyo, who is a manufacturer of plastic vehicle accessories, has introduced their newest addition, which is a portable toilet for your vehicle. Just in case you were wondering, this toilet comes with a plastic bag to gather all of your waste.
And if you are a modest person there is no reason to fear, because this toilet comes with a curtain that is large enough to completely conceal the toilet user. One of the company’s officials told reporters, “The commode will come in handy during major disasters such as earthquakes or when you are caught in a traffic jam.”

Another benefit to this new portable toilet is that it is small enough to fit inside of a person’s suitcase. However, all of you anxious customers will have to wait until the product is available for purchase, which will be on November 15. I don’t know if I can wait that long!

Bill Maher - Pope On Fire - Vatican Declares Holy Bonfire

This is pretty funny, especially towards the end. Clip is less than 2 minutes long.

2007-10-23T04:00:00.000-04:00

Fotografias (2007).. A documentary

Theater N in Wilmington held the Latin Beat Film Festival 2007 this past week. While I have no idea what kind of an audience most of the films on the slate got, I have to say I was one of the five audience members who got to see an interesting Argentine documentary “Fotografias” (Photographs), made by Andrés Di Tella. On good days you may get a decent audience for independent cinema in a small city like Wilmington but documentaries have it much harder. Not a lot of people want to see documentaries, and making good documentaries is truly an art.

This fact was brought home to me as I watched Fotografias. It took a while for the documentary to catch on with me. It is however a noble effort and has its moments. It appealed to me since it deals with issues of identity, what makes you who you are and it is not an easy question to answer if at all there is an answer.

The documentary tracks the story of Andrés Di Tella son of an Argentine father and sociologist Torcuato Di Tella , and an Indian mother (Kamala Aparao) who is from a princely family in Southern India, a rather unusual union. Andrés claims that he was not really that much in to the Indian part of his identity, not till his mother passed away although he was aware of it. I wondered how much of that had to with his experiences with racism while at school in England, in addition to the fact that his mother shielded him from that part of his identity.

It is this part of this identity that he starts to explore in an attempt to understand how and why so little of it his mother has left behind. And he does not have a lot to go on, just a few letters, pictures and film that his mother has shot. In addition to that he has memories of his visit to India when he was 11. And so begins his quest on which he takes his wife and son Rocco along, which begins with trying to track down someone who is not related to his family but happens to be Indian (a Ramachandra Gowda, the adopted son of the wife of an Argentine spiritual guru who had his awakening in India). This was the part of the documentary that I thought just dragged, I thought Andrés was profiling this part as he really had no other connections to build on and in a sense it almost felt like he was grasping at straws, but at the same time it perhaps was borne of a more serious question of one's identity, especially when it is fractured the way Andre’s seems to be. There is also some footage of Andre’s son Rocco playing with dinosaurs. I understand the need to introduce him as he becomes a part of the film maker’s search to resolve, integrate and comprehend his dual cultural identity, but I thought we could have done without this part.

Given the dearth of material Andrés has to carry out his research using the few artifacts he has from his mother’s life, talk to his father and her many relatives back in India. It was here that the film got the most interesting for me as bits and pieces about his mother start coming together through interviews, pictures and fascinating anecdotes from her life as narrated by her relatives and friends and visits to homes including her ancestral land and palace.

The mixing of Argentine and Indian culture coupled with the gaps left by Andre’s mother will make you empathize with Andre’s journey and his need to resolve questions of his fractured identity, multiculturalism and self in relation to the world around.

So what exactly are the gaps left by Andre’s mother Kamala? Born in a conservative royal family, where women were expected to conform with little personality of their own, she became something of a rebel and identified with the socialist cause. Perhaps the die was cast then and further grew stronger with her relationship and marriage to Andre’s father and her move to Argentina. How do you hold on to your cultural identity when you have no sense of it in your surroundings? How do hold on to it, what is your identity when you don’t have strong roots to begin with (as is Kamala’s case). There are really no answers here and things don’t get tied up neatly.

Andrés recalls a memory of himself and his mother when he was a child of being in a car when they were almost out of gas, and they were going downhill and his mother was not worried. “She felt so carefree.. free of the bonds/issues of race, religion, ethnicity, nationality and culture” (not verbatim). And perhaps that is what she was trying to be in her life.. free, while some of us celebrate this aspect of ourselves and take a lot of pride in our culture and heritage, not everyone feels this pull as strongly. I can certainly identify with that.

While I will not call this an excellent documentary it certainly was interesting to watch, and I know at least one other audience member did not share that sentiment. As she walked out behind me I heard her mention to one of the theater volunteers "What was all that about?" .

2007-10-19T04:00:00.000-04:00

Friday Word "Fear"

As per Mona, the Friday word is "Fear". I present two takes on it.

Fear

Her words sharper than a rapier

Piercing skin and sinew

To the very depth of his soul

He felt himself ebbing in to

A bottomless chasm.. welcoming him

With arms wide open to oblivion

A chill shot up his spine..

A cold sweat on his brow

An absinthian bile bubbled up

Into his veins seeping thru his insides

Turning flesh and blood

And his world to black

His heart beat beneath

In vain awaiting an echo from hers

A primal fear rising

Of abandonment

Of being left alone and heart broken

Of just being… boring

Of perishing in his own personal hell

Lit by the fire of her eyes

Licking at every inch of his being

Just as she had…

Once in love and carnal lust

That she promised would never dim

Fear of being a broken marionette

Tossed out when a new one came along

Ragged and crumpled.. limbs askew

A macabre dance of

The one damned to be a

Love of yesterday.

Fear… (On a brighter note) :-)

A sweet longing, an unending hunger coursed thru her…

How she missed..

The touch of his hand..

The little things and sweet nothings

Their tangled embrace of soft kisses

That set her nerve endings on fire

Of the way he lost himself in her eyes

In the scented silken forest of her hair

And how he slept like a baby

In the glen between her breasts

The goose bumps as he said her name

Along the delicate arch of her collarbone

The feel of his breath

As it cut a swath across her being

The touch of his fingers

As he closed his eyes to sense her contours

And the soft swell of her rising breasts

And the whorls of her navel

The sensuous dance of his fingers

Along the ridges of her spine

Weaving a troubadour of amour

The feel of his tongue as he painted her

In the iridescent colors of his love

His breath as it wafted across

Her aching yoni lips

His lips whispering a paean to her feminine divine

A sweet delirium an unusual fear

Of being alive in strange new places

Of opening doors to a celestial ecstasy and love

She ached to breathe with his breath

To inhabit this world of waking dreams

And a love so complete

She held her arms out to him

Welcoming him to her heart

Silently whispering to herself

“I won’t fear this love”.

2007-10-18T04:00:00.000-04:00

The Decline of the American Empire (Not a movie review)

I was drawn to “The decline of the American empire” after I first watched Denys Arcand’s “The Barbarian Invasions” a few years ago. In the “Barbarian Invasions” a dying Remy Girard and his brethren gather at a lakeside cottage in Quebec. They reminisce about their past loves, escapades and their lives watched over by Remy’s estranged son Sebastien who is visiting his father after years. This movie is also about looking back, taking stock about their lives and introspection especially at a point when the blush of youth is pretty much gone and their metamorphoses both physical and within them are so very obvious. This movie was in a lot of ways a celebration of life, love, family and friendships.

Observing these self absorbed, but witty and very human characters made me curious about “The decline of the American empire” which preceded this movie. I finally managed to watch it a few days back. When made originally in 1986 it was celebrated as an excellent example of film making. While some movies that may examine the zeitgeist of their times age remarkably well, holding their relevance over time, the same cannot be said about “The decline of the American empire”. And I am not talking about the “oh so” obviously visible signs of the 80s such as the fashions and the hairstyles.

This movie happens over a fall evening as four academics, Remy (Remy Girard) married and a professor of history, Claude (Yves Jacques) who is gay, Pierre (Pierre Curzi) who is divorced and living with a student Danielle (who he meets at a massage parlor), and Alain (Daniel Briere) who is single talk about sex, women their loves and their affairs as they cook dinner for the four women.

Their women guests are Louis (Remy’s wife played by Dorothee Berryman, has no idea of his dalliances), Dominique (Dominique Michel) a writer and a colleague of the guys, Diane (Louise Portal) has left her husband and begun a sadomasochistic affair with Mario (Gabriel Arcand), a rough, leather-jacket clad drug dealer, and Danielle (Genevieve Rioux) are working out at a health gym. They also discuss sex, the female body and of course men!

Although I watched the English version (dubbed), I have to say I would rather have preferred hearing the French dialog( although I don’t understand the language, I love the sound of it).

Having said that, I could not shake the feeling that I was watching something dated. I just thought that while at that point (1980s) this movie might have captured the mood of the times perfectly, it was hard to believe that the fall of Western civilization/ America was going to be laid at the doorstep of a few oversexed academic intellectuals. I mean come on look at what seems to be doing us in today?

But back on to the movie. There really is not much of a plot here, but the dialog is witty, sharp and funny and the characters are quite compelling and well fleshed out in all their foibles, phobias and compulsions. The movie is not all talky and wordy, there are flashbacks that help the viewer get a good sense of the characters. As the evening proceeds, there is turmoil as Dominique, reveals that she has slept with both Remy and Pierre, but her current lover (for the night) is the young student Alain who is besotted with her sophistication.

But perhaps the best line in the movie belongs to, Mario, Diane’s boyfriend who waits around while the men are cooking and at dinner states "They talked about sex all afternoon as if they were getting ready for an orgy. Instead, the big deal is a fish pie!"

The movie does ask some interesting questions and explores the nature of sex and its relationship to middle age, marriage and cultural mores. But I don’t think the decline of Western civilization can be laid at the doorstep of over sexed intellectuals no?

2007-10-16T04:00:00.000-04:00

Poem.. Cool Ad..

His Id...

His feet pounded the black space beneath his feet
Speckled with dry, wizened brown leaves
Falling silent sighs lost to the wind
Of dreams deferred
A canopy of the dying and withered
Welcomed in to its dark embrace

Memories crunching.. pulverized
From his consciousness
Tossed into a bottomless chasm
Of distant loved ones
Receding figures in his rear view mirror
Fast fading, sepia tinged memories ..

And he kept running in to the arms of his id.

Cool Ad

via Ads of the world

2007-10-12T04:18:00.000-04:00

Feeling Bookish...

Some of you may have noticed I have this little thing on the right sidebar where I have a link and the cover of the book I am currently reading. I normally try and write a "Not A Review" once I am done reading. But there are times that a book will just completely grab you from the very first page and won't let go, just because the story is so very real and compelling. The book I am reading is "Where War Lives" by the Pulitzer prize winning photojournalist Paul Watson. From the book's description...

Paul Watson was born a rebel with one hand, who grew up thinking it took two to fire an assault rifle, or play jazz piano. So he became a journalist. At first, he loved war. He fed his lust for the bang-bang, by spending vacations with guerilla fighters in Angola, Eritrea, Sudan, and Somalia, and writing about conflicts on the frontlines of the Cold War. Soon he graduated to assignments covering some of the world’s most important conflicts, including South Africa, Rwanda, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

Watson reported on Osama bin Laden’s first battlefield victory in Somalia. Unwittingly, Watson’s Pulitzer Prize—winning photo of Staff Sgt. David Cleveland — whose Black Hawk was shot down over the streets of Mogadishu — helped hand bin Laden one of his earliest propaganda coups, one that proved barbarity is a powerful weapon in a modern media war. Public outrage over the pictures of Cleveland’s corpse forced President Clinton to order the world’s most powerful military into retreat. With each new beheading announced on the news, Watson wonders whether he helped teach the terrorists one of their most valuable lessons.
Much more than a journalist’s memoir, Where War Lives connects the dots of the historic continuum from Mogadishu through Rwanda to Afghanistan and Iraq.

In the prologue Paul Watson quotes from Camus...

He wrote in his notebook that he had solved the mystery of where war lives. It lives in all of us. He described the internal conflict that consumes us, whether it's in the heart of soldiers on the battlefield, or those of folks safe back home, wondering, and regretting "That they can't share the way the others are going to die."

"It's there, that's where it really is, and we were looking got it in the blue sky and the world's indifference. It is in this terrible loneliness both of the combatants and of the noncombatants, in this humiliated despair that we all feel, in the baseness that we feel growing in our faces as the days go by. The reign of the beasts has begun."

I am almost halfway through the book now and it is a gripping read about war and the effect it has, not just on those in the midst of it but also on those that document it. It is about anger and guilt and also about decisions made in the blink of an eye and their ability to alter history.
It is also very relevant, dear leader is said to have read Camus, but I seriously doubt he gets it.

Cool Book Ads... Saw these nice ads here. Click on the image if it is hard to see the ads.

Gandhi... The influence of a book.

Product : Reader's Book Shop
Agency : O&M Mumbai
Country : India

Turn the page on poverty
Good Books is an alternative to Amazon that gives all its profits directly to Oxfam to help build sustainable communities.

Product : Good Books
Agency : Ogilvy
Country : New Zealand

2007-10-11T04:00:00.000-04:00

Random Stuff
You should really talk to your daughter... before the beauty industry does. An interesting PSA from Dove's Campaign For Real Beauty Youtube link.

Neat eh? I would probably applaud it too, except that Dove is owned by Unilever.
Now what might be the problem with that you say? Unilever also owns the Axe brand of deodorant/body spray/shower gels.
Have you seen some of their ads? What is the image of women that they seek to portray here? Here is a sample below. Many more here (may not be all work safe).

No larger message here, just makes you wonder doesn't it at the incongruity of it?

Chili Club Restaurant: Woman on fire / Man on fire via Ads of the World

2007-10-09T08:43:00.000-04:00

So You Wanna Go Noonhatting?
Image from Andrew Saeger / Seattle P-I

So what is Noonhatting? It is the name of a website that lets you enter your e-mail address, what day you want to have lunch and what general area you want to have a lunch in and then a computer program matches you up with up to three other random strangers who want to do lunch in the same geographical area. That’s it… there is no matching for gender and/or age and this is not a dating site and there are no background checks or registration. The potential for discomfort of just two strangers doing lunch on their first (and possibly last) meet is sought to be alleviated by having a group of no larger than four.

Noonhat is the brainchild of Brian Dorsey a software developer in the Seattle area. Link

At first, Dorsey, a software developer at Vulcan, had doubts. When he told
people about the Web site, he said, "I got a lot of blank stares.’What? Huh? Why
would anyone do that?' "
Turns out people do want to break bread with total
strangers. Since Noonhat was launched in June, more than 400 lunches have been
scheduled (although Dorsey doesn't know how many have actually happened).
…
"I was just kind of thinking that I wanted to have lunch with new people all
the time," said Dorsey, who is 33. "Just from a selfish standpoint, I wanted to
have lunch with a really wide variety of people."
Noonhat offers its service
all over North America, but most of the users so far are in the Seattle metro
area. Dorsey also thinks the site is a good way for out-of-town visitors to meet
up with locals.

There is more at the article from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the reporter Kristin Dizon writes about her own experience “Noonhatting” if anyone is interested in reading.

Personally, I think it is a neat idea although I am not sure I would want to have lunch with complete strangers.

But perhaps there is something to be said for just taking a chance, who knows? But as a fairly private person I would rather rely on my own instincts and means to decide if I want to converse with a stranger on the train, over lunch or at any public spot.

What do you folks think?

And while I was writing this post up it reminded me of another program I heard on NPR a while back.

Couple Finds Good Will in Taste Tests
All Things Considered, June 29, 2007 · A food-loving couple from San Diego has launched a quirky social experiment: They go to restaurants and ask if they can taste other people's food. Surprisingly, most people happily comply — even offering
their own forks!

While I am all for sharing what I eat with other folks if asked (even strangers), the whole offering their own forks to sample what they were having does sound very icky!
Are social networks and networking websites a hot thing?

2007-10-06T19:05:00.000-04:00

Sometimes Bill Maher Says It A Lot Better

link

"Diet and exercise don’t fail, a fact brought home last week by a new Duke University study that showed diet and exercise is just an effective a cure for depression as Paxil and Zoloft. So ask your doctor if getting off your --- is right for you."

2007-10-01T04:00:00.000-04:00

The Bastard Of Istanbul (Not A Review)

Hardcover: 368 pages
Publisher: Viking Adult (January 18, 2007)
Language: English

Life is coincidence, though sometimes it takes a djinni to fathom that.

The word “jinn” literally means anything which has the connotation of concealment, invisibility, seclusion, and remoteness. In pre-Islamic Arabian mythology and in Islamic Culture, a jinni (also “djinni” or “djini”) is a member of the jinn (or “djinn”), generally thought to be a race of supernatural creatures.

In that simple sounding line is captured the essence of the complex web that humans weave that makes up their life. Their history, culture, religion all form an amalgam that make up one’s identity. Their actions can often have a lasting impact on lives, both on those that have faded in to the realms of the past and on lives that have barely lived. These form the basis of Elif Shafak’s novel “The Bastard of Istanbul” a lively and a multihued tale of two families one Turkish the Kazancis and the other the Armenian-American Tchakhmakchians linked together by their pasts. A past that includes the Armenian genocide that a lot of the Turkish nation and people barely acknowledge and even ignore and is something that the Armenian people consider an important part of their history and a grave injustice committed against them.

We get to meet the strong willed, iconoclastic, sassy and independent, Zeliha clad in miniskirts and high heels and runs a tattoo parlor. She is a mother to Asya a 19 year old who is like her mother in a lot of ways yet far removed from her. She refers to Zeliha not as mom but as aunt. Asya is a fan of Johnny Cash and dabbles in existentialism, sneaking off to the Café Kundera (a gathering place for Turkish “intellectuals”) and for trysts with one of the members of her circle at the café while she is supposedly taking ballet lessons. Asya is a bastard, a name that she is first called to by Grandma Gulsum and then by a kid at school, which is when the meaning of the word dawns on her. Asya is complex, multifaceted personality with a family full of women and bereft of men. Asya sees her physical self as a manifestation of the Quranic creature Dabbet-ul Arz, an ogre who takes each of his organs from different animals in nature, she visualizes herself as a disembodied construct of parts inherited from the females of her family.

Asya has three aunts the observant, religious Banu who is now a clairvoyant and also can “speak” to two djinni a good and a bad one. Then there is Cevriye a national history teacher at a private school who is widowed and Feride a hypochondriac whose mind constantly dwells on one imagined impending disaster to the next. There is also their mother Gulsum and grandmother Petite-Ma. As Asya describes it, this is a nuthouse, but one full of rich, strong yet nuanced and memorable female characters. There is no man in this household (they never seem to survive past their 40th birthday). There is the absent son Mustafa living in Arizona who has disconcerting feelings and memories at the sight of miniskirts and is seemingly happily married to an American woman Rose but yet has trouble relating to the female sex.

Rose has a daughter Armanoush from her previous marriage to Barsam Tchakhmakchian who lives in San Francisco along with his mother Shushan and three sisters. Armanoush spends her time between the two places. She decides to eventually go to Istanbul to find out more about her grandmother Shushan’s time there and to also understand her roots and reconcile her fragmented childhood spent between the two cultures and the Janissary’s paradox. She ends up visiting the Kazancis, the family of her stepfather Mustafa. And those begins a friendship between Asya and Armanoush children born into families that cannot dust off the vestiges of their unspoken past.

The that link these two households share threaten to come to the fore as events transpire that will bring Mustafa (and Rose) to Istanbul.

Will aunt Banu’s clairvoyant abilities to peek in to the past with the help of her djinni be a Faustian pact with the darker elements of the supernatural? What she learns will change lives and reveal truths. But will this make it any easier for those who live with the consequences of their and someone else’s actions? Can one’s past truly be completely shed or walked away from?

I loved the way Shafak captures the spirit of Istanbul a city I would so love to visit. I could smell, see and feel the place thru her rich, vibrant words that brought the city and its people, its chaos, its modernity and its antiquity to life. The characters she penned so well completely captivated me and I loved that they could not be pigeon holed in to comforting categories.

The part of the book that I did question – Zeliha goes to the doctor’s office to get an abortion and it as she is going under for this procedure that she hears the call of nearby mosques to prayer. An agnostic/atheist she screams, does she have a vision or a message or was it just the rambling of a mind unlocking itself under the fog of sedation? She decides to have the baby instead and leaves the doctor’s office feeling less dispirited. But as one finds out who the father of the baby is, and the circumstances that led to it, I found her decision to carry her baby mystifying, but I guess it ties back to life being all about coincidences and the choices we make at any given time?

Don’t expect neat answers to all your questions at the end of the book but perhaps that is the point of it too. This book is a fascinating look at cultural, gender and national identities and the forces and events that shape them and a look at religious and political currents that continue to shape Turkey.

Some of you may already be aware of this, the author Elif Shafak was charged under Article 301 the Turkish criminal code (also used in the prosecution of Orhan Pamuk earlier this year). The charges were reportedly based on remarks made by a character of Armenian ancestry in her novel, The Bastard of Istanbul - the character describes the death of Armenians during the first world war as a genocide. link. These charges were subsequently dropped for lack of evidence.

Elif Shafak currently is an Assistant Professor in the Near Eastern Studies Department at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. For more on her bio, go here. As someone who straddles two cultures I loved her interview to the Haagsche Courant newspaper and if you are an immigrant and/or someone who lives amongst more than one culture what she has to say will likely resonate with you. link

To quote her from an essay for Time Asia..

East and West are often used as if they were mutually exclusive categories—static and eternal. There is, however, one city where you quickly learn to mistrust the two concepts. In Istanbul, you understand, perhaps not intellectually but intuitively, that East and West are ultimately imaginary ideas, ones that can be de-imagined and re-imagined.

I can’t wait to read her latest “The saint of incipient insanities”.

2007-09-19T20:57:00.000-04:00

Dayereh (The Circle).. Not A Review

Dayereh (2000)

Director: Jafar Panahi

Writer: Kambuzia Partovi

Genre: Drama

Runtime: 90 min

Country: Iran

Language: Persian

Color: Color

THE CIRCLE won the prestigious Golden Lion award at the 2000 Venice Film Festival.
Dayereh opens rather ominously with a black screen and the beginnings of the moaning of a woman that soon rise to screams. As a viewer you wonder is the woman is having a nightmare being assaulted or something far worse. The screams soon stop to be replaced by the sounds of an infant crying. The black screen slowly brightens to the dull grayish white walls of a door with a sliding window that is closed shut. A nurse slides it open and calls out a name. An old woman clad in a black chador approaches and is told “Congratulations.. It’s a girl!” and the window slides shut. The woman knocks tentatively on the window again and as it slides open a different nurse opens it. The woman asks about the gender of the child again and is once again told it is a girl. The old woman responds ”But the ultrasound said it would be a boy”.

The profound implications of the birth of a girl are seen on the deep lines of the woman’s mother, the news is to be passed on to the rest of the family. As the grandmother’s relative goes down the spiral stairs of the hospital to the street outside, she is asked if she has change to make a telephone call by two women, Arezou (Mariam Palvin Almani) and Nargess (Nargess Mamizadeh). And thus begins another narrative about these two women temporarily out of prison. They are trying to raise cash for a bus ticket to Nargess’s hometown a place that is supposedly paradise while they try to avoid the police. While Nargess does manage to buy a bus ticket, she does not board the bus what about Arezou? Nargess tries to see her friend Pari (Fereshteh Sadr Orfani) who has recently escaped from prison and is pregnant and unmarried and is trying to get an abortion. Unable to find anyone who can help (papers need to be signed for the procedure and permission granted by the woman’s husband), she roams the streets of Teheran and encounters a poor woman as she prepares to abandon her child (a girl) who she can no longer support.

This movie is characterized by a number of riveting yet seemingly random converging narratives, where one character’s story ends another one begins, but does it? There are motifs alluding to a circle throughout the film. The opening long continuous shot down the spiral staircase in the hospital, Nargess watching Arezou go up the circular staircase of an office building as they try to raise money, and the chilling closing scene.

I wonder if the director meant it as a metaphor for the seemingly hopeless existence of women under the rule of the conservative Islamic clergy where their lives are lived in the shadows of men no matter what their particular set of circumstances maybe. They are all treated the same, as something lesser then men whether they are simple every day tasks of life like buying a ticket, enduring lewd acts on the street which seemingly have no reprisals or the possibility that a woman’s liberty may be taken away even at the slightest hint of a lack of virtuosity.

There really are no redeeming male characters in this movie save Pari’s father who tries to protect his daughter from her brothers who seek her out with malice after her release from prison.

This movie has almost no professional actors which actually gives this movie a documentary like look thus making it more potent in its effect on the audience. Having said that, I have to say that the principal actors in Dariyeh portray their characters with stunning effect.

Dariyeh ends leaving you with a sense of discomfort and without a resolution. The film has been banned in Iran and serves as a reminder of the continuing discrimination and subjugation of women in that society. It is a gripping film not just for the subject that it deals with but also for anyone who is a fan of serious cinema. The art of film making which is always a challenge under the best of circumstances is positively Sisyphean in a country that restricts creative freedoms, which is why Jafar Panahi’s work needs to be applauded.

2007-09-13T04:00:00.000-04:00

The Golden Door Nuovomondo (2006)

Director:Emanuele Crialese

Writer: Emanuele Crialese

Release Date: 22 September 2006 (Italy)

Genre: Drama

Runtime: 120 min / Canada:112 min (Toronto International Film Festival)

Country:Italy / Germany / France

Language:Italian / English

I managed to catch the lovely (but rather long) Italian movie “The Golden Door” at the Bryn Mawr film institute some time ago. This film was also shown at the recent Newark film festival. This movie is written and directed by Emanuele Crialese This is a sweet movie that is visually very appealing with a dream like quality to parts of it. I have to admit that I am only vaguely aware of the things that immigrants in the early 20^th century had to undergo to make it into this country (setting aside the challenges of making it once admitted). Also given the current debate over immigration policy in this nation of immigrants, and given my own background as an immigrant it was poignant watching this movie.

The movie opens with a windswept, boulder strewn vista and we see two men, bedraggled and barefoot scrambling up this rocky surface. As the close shots of the men’s bloodied feet give way to show them clamber up what looks to be the top of their climb, the camera pans farther away to reveal this beautiful but stark mountainside and that the men have ways to go. They eventually reach the summit, a shrine with a cross and we see small rocks in their mouths slightly bloodied (from being held there) that are now added to the small pile at its bottom.

Salvatore Mancuso (Vincenzo Amato) and his son Angelo (Francesco Casisa) place their offerings at the shrine and the father asks god for a sign if he should stay or leave their hard scrabble existence behind. A sign (of sorts) does arrive in the form of his other deaf-mute son Pietro (Filippo Pucillo) bearing photographs of what a new life in America purportedly looks like. Those have come to him by way of his grandmother Fortunata (Aurora Quattrocchi) who is performing an exorcism on one of the two women who have are going to America to be married.

Thus begins the story of a group of poor Italians from the mountains of Sicily on a crowded steamship to New York. Salvatore is a widower and is intrigued by a mysterious Englishwoman Lucy (Charlotte Gainsbourg) who he meets as they get ready to board the ship. She wants to marry someone for her to be able to enter America. Salvatore agrees. Lucy I thought with her modern world ways served as a metaphor for the new world that Salvatore and his family are aspiring to enter.

For the rest of the movie we travel along with the passengers on the ship, and learn about their dreams and their fears, experience their arduous journey and the realization that even if some of them make it to the shores of America they may not be admitted.

There is also a marriage brokering ceremony performed at Ellis island, which feels like an auction and your heart goes out to some of the young women as they are matched with much older men.

We see the various characters including Salvatore’s family face the various tests that they as potential immigrants must perform and the humiliations they must endure to be admitted to this country. They are forced to solve puzzles, perform mathematical tasks and undergo medical examinations in order to prove that they are "fit". So what will be the fate of the deaf-mute Pietro?
You have to watch this movie to find the answer to the final choice that Salvatore and his family must make that will change their lives in a very profound manner.

In addition to the opening sequences there are several scenes that stayed with me..

The movie has almost no background score for about the first 40 mins or so, and I found that somehow the movie was more riveting allowing me to focus on the “natural” sounds of the story. And the very effective use of sound (the rumble of the engines, the groaning of the metal innards of the ship) accentuate the mood of the movie which has excellent cinematography.

There is a brief interlude when two passengers in the bowels of the ship start to sing, their only accompaniment being the Tambourine, I could not understand the words but the song and the power of their emotions behind it touched me.

As the ship departs for the

there is a shot of all the passengers lined up against the decks looking out at the docks similarly lined with people (Were they the ones left behind? Or could not get on the ship?). As the vessel separates from land slowly we see the distance that separates these two groups of people grow. This felt like it was a metaphor for leaving behind the familiar to begin a perilous journey in to the unknown to find the promised land. And it is a promised land that the immigrants cannot even glimpse thru the fog, as much as they try and so the land of milk and honey that they imagine continues to be that and in this perhaps one can say that the movie has an ambiguous ending.

Watch it if you get a chance, this movie is a touching tribute to immigrants.

2007-09-05T21:30:00.000-04:00

Newark Film Festival (Sept 6 -9, 2007) Newark, Delaware

The tiny town of Newark, DE is home to the University of Delaware. It was purely by chance that I found out that Newark has its own film festival last year. It’s apparently that time of the year again and they have a better roster of films this time around. The festival is now in its 3^rd year and is organized by two film buffs , Barry Schlecker & Lisa Lucas. This event is small enough that I got a chance to talk with Lisa Lucas last year after one of the screenings and tell her how much I loved what she was doing.

For a complete list of films go here. The ones that I think I will try to watch are below.

I Have Never Forgotten You:
The Life & Legacy of Simon Wiesenthal
documentary / PG-13 / 1hr.45min.
For more than 60 years, Simon Wiesenthal dedicated his life to tracking down Nazi war criminals -- contributing to the prosecution of over 1,000 of them. Screened to sold out crowds at New York's Tribeca Film Festival, this documentary is narrated by Nicole Kidman.

No End In Sight

documentary / NR / 1hr.41min.

The first film of its kind to chronicle the reasons behind Iraq’s descent into guerilla war, warlord rule, criminality and anarchy, NO END IN SIGHT is a jaw-dropping, insider’s tale of wholesale incompetence, recklessness and venality. It is a powerful look into how arrogance and ignorance turned a military victory into a seemingly endless and deepening nightmare of a war.

The Lives of Others

drama / R / 2hrs.17min.

At once a political thriller and human drama, THE LIVES OF OTHERS begins in East Berlin in 1984, five years before Glasnost and the fall of the Berlin Wall and ultimately takes us to 1991, in what is now the reunited Germany. In the film, each character asks questions that we confront every day: how do we deal with power and ideology? Do we follow our principles or our feelings? More than anything else, it is a human drama about the ability of human beings to do the right thing, no matter how far they have gone down the wrong path.

Once

Irish music drama / R / 1hr.26min.

A deceptively simple story of how a guy & a girl (we never learn their names) are drawn, over a few days, into each other's orbit, a romance — or is it? — played out in the songs they sing together; songs that will carry you away... an inspirational tale of two kindred spirits who find each other on the bustling streets of Dublin. One is a street musician who lacks the confidence to perform his own songs. The other is a young mother trying to find her way in a strange new town. As their lives intertwine, they discover each other’s talents and push one another to realize what each had only dreamt about before. ONCE is their inspiring story.

Gypsy Caravan

documentary / NR / 1hr.50min.

Shot by legendary cinematographer Albert Maysles, this dynamic musical documentary follows five Gypsy bands from four countries who unite for the Gypsy Caravan as they take their show around North America for a six-week tour, astounding every audience they meet. Their musical styles range from flamenco to brass band, Romanian violin to Indian folk. And with humor and soul in their voices, they celebrate the best in Gypsy culture and the diversity of the Romani people in an explosion of song and dance.

2007-09-02T10:20:00.000-04:00

The Septembers of Shiraz (Not A Review)

Hardcover: 340 pages
Publisher: Ecco (July 24, 2007)
Language: English

I first heard about Dalia Sofer’s debut novel on NPR (audio link here) and was intrigued by the storyline of the travails of an Iranian Jewish family in post-revolutionary Iran.

Book Description:
In the aftermath of the Iranian revolution, rare-gem dealer Isaac Amin is arrested, wrongly accused of being a spy. Terrified by his disappearance, his family must reconcile a new world of cruelty and chaos with the collapse of everything they have known.
As Isaac navigates the tedium and terrors of prison, forging tenuous trusts, his wife feverishly searches for him, suspecting, all the while, that their once-trusted housekeeper has turned on them and is now acting as an informer. And as his daughter, in a childlike attempt to stop the wave of baseless arrests, engages in illicit activities, his son, sent to New York before the rise of the Ayatollahs, struggles to find happiness even as he realizes that his family may soon be forced to embark on a journey of incalculable danger.

This book took me a few pages of reading to really grab me although it has been referred to as a “page-turning literary debut”, but hey that is me. Perhaps the way the narrative unfolds had its purpose, for once it had my attention it became quite engrossing. The story is told in third person from the perspective of the four principal characters of the Amin family.. Isaac, his wife Farnaz, daughter Shirin and their son Parviz who is in far away Brooklyn studying architecture.

We watch the slow unraveling of the lives of this family. Isaac is a gems dealer. His crime is that he is Jewish and that he tried to live a life making money impervious to the excesses of the Shah. His services have been patronized by many of the ruling of the elite including the wife of the shah. His interrogator in prison is none other than Mohsen who is missing a thumb thanks to his time in the Shah’s prisons. In a rather dark twist Mohsen often brings his young son to prison, something we find out as Isaac hears the sounds of tiny feet above his cell. We watch this often surreal game between these two men and the reader will be left wondering what will become of Isaac. Will he be shot, for there seems no logic to the process by which prisoners are picked up for execution or will he succumb to the harsh conditions of his confinement which includes torture? Sofer describes this in language that makes the reader experience all the color that has drained from Isaac’s life in the little cell that is now his world.

Isaac has a lot of time to contemplate during his stay in the prison, his life, his past love, his marriage, the slowly growing distance between him and his wife and his relationship with his children. Some of what he feels towards Farnaz is complicated by the presence of Vartan Sofoyan in the prison. He used to be Farnaz’s piano teacher and he knew she felt more alive with him than anyone else he had seen. Farnaz on her part sense’s Isaac’s distance in how his eyes smile in response to Suzy, in a way she can no longer do. Suzy is the family’s dog.

There are crisscrossing narratives here and the reader is taken along different paths of the family.
Isaac’s wife Farnaz is left behind to carry on with life, look for Isaac and as much as she tries she cannot resolve the incongruity of her collapsing world with the normalcy around her…

“That the city is short by one man makes so little difference – stores still open their doors, schools ring their bells, banks exchange currency, grass-green double-decker buses- men on the bottom, women on top-follow their daily routes.”

Farnaz’s collection of objects from her visits around the world, appear to provide her some comfort and solace.

The attachment of these characters to their status and lifestyle (via their personal belongings) and their reason for not leaving Tehran is evidenced from the utterance by by Isaac’s sister and her husband “If we leave this country without taking care of our belongings, who in Geneva or Paris or Timbuktu will understand who we once were?”

The relationship of Farnaz with their housekeeper Habibeh is also explored in the larger context of the overthrow of the Shah, the resurgence of the Islamists, differences across class, and a sense of resentment and a desire for revenge against the rich regardless of their guilt in the situation that the poor find themselves in. What is the role of Habibeh and her son (who Isaac had given a job at his workplace) in Isaac imprisonment? How does one justify his removal of Isaac’s office equipment under the guise of “Safe keeping”?

Isaac’s daughter Shirin inhabits a world where she makes some surprisingly adult choices. Her belief that some how hiding the files of detainees (that she finds while at her friend Leila’s house whose father works for the revolutionary guard) might save those detainees from a cruel fate is brave yet will send a chill thru the reader. Shirin’s friendship with Leila is rather ironic because she is from a different class of people and it’s the closing of private schools that has even brought them together since public schools are all that remain open.

The theft of files is indeed discovered but is the perpetrator or the files? The disappearance of her father takes her toll on the little kid and she seeks succor in magical thoughts and the comfort of tea prepared for her by the schools nurse during her frequent visits to the school’s infirmary.

Isaac’s son Parviz’s life in Brooklyn is characterized by loneliness and his incomprehension as to why no one understands his situation, as he goes from thinking about going to architecture schools in Europe to now ending up in NY, strapped for cash and working in his Hasidic landlord Zalman Mendelson’s hat shop to help with the rent. I did wonder if his growing attraction to Rachel who comes from a completely different observant orthodox Jewish world was born out of his sense of displacement and detachment.

Sofer writing style is very effective in how she conveys gravity thru use of language. The passage where Farnaz first reveals to her daughter Shirin that Isaac is now in prison is just one example.

When her mother finally called Leila’s house and arrived, frantic, she kissed and hugged Shirin, in a way she hadn’t done in months, then leading her to the car, she said, ”Your father isn’t on a business trip, like I told you. He is in prison. But don’t worry prison is now routine.” She looked like she was about to cry, but Shirin wasn’t sure.
These were the only words spoken between them that night. Later in bed, Shirin thought of her Monopoly game, of that square in the corner with the distraught convict behind bars. In Monopoly, too, prison is routine. Even the best players have to leave everything and jump across the board to that dreaded box, missing a few turns while the same goes on.

The author captures both the mood of the city and her characters brilliantly.

She walks for a long time through the city. Above her, windows and balconies close, shutting out the cool September breeze. Summer is leaving, and with it the buzz of ceiling fans, the smell of wet dust rising through the air-conditioning vents, the clink of noontime dishes heard through open windows, the chatter of families passing long, muggy afternoons in courtyards, eating pumpkin seeds and watermelon.

Sofer’s writing is exquisite and her words give the characters a complexity, nuance and a rich depth. This book really grew on me, I loved it.

If you want to know a bit more about the author Dalia Sofer, here is a link to her interview in the NYTimes Sunday magazine.

2007-08-25T16:55:00.000-04:00

Feeling Down? Want Good Looking Skin? Have A Ramen Curry Bath!

Link from Japan Probe
The bath, shaped like a ramen bowl, contains pepper-flavored water colored a light, milky brown, to like tonkotsu (pork bone) ramen soup. The special bath was created jointly by the theme park and a famous ramen shop, Nantsuttei in Hadano, Kanagawa Prefecture.

The bath was completed at the unveiling event, with the owner of Nantsuttei adding “noodles” made of bathwater additives into the tub.

The water contains collagen and garlic extracts, and theme park officials claim it can help produce beautiful skin and aid moisture retention.

“The aroma of pepper is said to have the effects of refreshing your mind, warming your burned-out heart and inflaming your passion,” explained a statement by spa complex Hakone Kowakien Yunessun in Hakone, one of Japan’s most popular hot spring resorts.

Ramen lovers in bathing suits turned into ingredients in the broth, jumping into the three tubs shaped like ramen bowls underneath noodle decorations hanging over their heads.

There is a Youtube video too, link

There are also green tea, coffee and red wine themed baths, I would not mind trying these just for the heck of it.

2007-08-24T06:46:00.000-04:00

This Blog Is Dying...
Just a metaphor for me being very busy at work and not being able to post or visit very many blogs.

So while I still have a few readers left would like to say this blog will not have regular posts for sometime. I really don't know when I will get enough time to write, and by the time I do I may not have anyone reading.

Mais c'est la vie..

2007-08-20T08:20:00.000-04:00

The Tender Bar: A Memoir.. Not A Review

The Tender Bar: A Memoir by J.R. Moehringer (Paperback - Aug 1, 2006)

Paperback: 432 pages
Publisher: Hyperion (August 1, 2006)
Language: English

One may not have to be familiar with the custom of going out to a bar as a part of one’s social activity, or even be a guy to read and enjoy J.R. Moehringer’s memoir “The Tender Bar”, the coming of age story of a boy who grows up without his biological father, is never quite able to escape his shadow for the longest time. Absent though he is. He is still omnipresent, seared into J.R.’s memory as a disembodied voice on the radio (he is a disc jockey). This is a funny, sad, engaging, endearing and a poignant read of a hard to tell story that resonates with humanity.

In the absence of his father the bar (where J.R.’s uncle Charlie works) and men who inhabit that bar play a big role in his life. We get to meet a rich, colorful and a quirky cast of characters including his extended family living in his grandfather’s dilapidated house, and the denizens of “the bar” formerly known as “Dickens” and then “Publicans”. They are also mostly men, who assume a larger than life significance for the boy as he is growing up becoming a composite role model of a missing father. The normal rituals, ballgames, going to the beach and more happen for the author under the tutelage of these men. And acceptance does not come easy initially especially as a kid. He is there, acknowledged but ignored until one day he helps the men out with a word puzzle and everything changes.

Eventually J.R. moves to Arizona (with his mother) and then goes to college, and works at the New York Times, the bar remains a motif and a central character in his life as he comes back to it a number of times. Yes it almost has a life of its own and the author has done a great job describing the place and the characters, and I could feel it coming alive as I read it. I could visualize and even smell the place (or maybe I have been to too many bars).

Publicans becomes a refuge for him at different points in his life (stints at the Home Fashions section at Lord & Taylors after finishing Yale, the seemingly dead end job of a copyboy at the New York Times with only a slim chance to become a reporter) and at times of heartbreak. The issue of alcohol abuse lurks in the background without quite being mentioned, but this worked fine at least for me, most readers will notice at times as the author almost seems to spiral down into it. He walks away from it though.

“Deciding to quit drinking was the easiest thing I ever did. Describing how I did it, and why, and whether or not I will drink again, is much harder.”

A quote simple as it is has a lot of meaning to it.

J.R.’s relationship with his mother (like the rest of the book) is handled in a very even handed manner without being too sentimental. Her desire that he go to Yale or Harvard resonated with me as did a lot of other parts of this excellent memoir.

J.R.’s struggles at Yale and his desire and attempts to fit in or not standout in a milieu that seemed populated by the kids of well off parents lead to a number of gaffes and sad/funny situations (he runs a laundering service for his fellow students for some extra money on the side). The book is full of great anecdotes and repartees that will have you smiling and/or shaking your head. Though this book is that, one cannot escape the underlying strands of loneliness (for some) and the realities of life both inside and outside the bar.

Reading about the experiences of J.R. as he works in a bookstore in Arizona, with two eccentric guys who manage the place was one of the most appealing parts of the book for me. His initial love of books that was restricted to his grandfather’s collection in the basement of his house, flowers while working with Bill (chain smokes but never uses an ashtray) and Bud (when excited sniffs his fist) as a teen. It reminded me of how my own love of reading began as a kid, often from the generosity of neighbors who lent me books especially during the slow summer vacations.

And although I did say this book was not overtly sentimental I was moved by many parts of it, especially after J.R. visits Manhasset (which lost almost 50 people following the WTC attacks on 9/11). It is towards the end of the book that the events of that day bring a newer reality in all its nakedness to the bar and those that inhabit it’s world.

“The tender bar” appealed to me for another more personal reason. The author J.R. went to school at Yale University in New Haven, CT. I called this small city home for almost a decade and it holds fond memories for me. J.R. talks about his time at Yale and his time in New Haven which includes memories that center around the lovely campus of Yale and streets and other places in the city. I found myself revisiting some of them as I read this memoir.

I was a bit unsure at the onset if I would really enjoy this book, but I am so glad that I read it. This book to me is about dreaming about dreams that almost seem out of reach and persisting despite the numerous knocks and follies encountered along the way. To use a well worn cliché it is often about the journey and not the destination, which is what “Tender Bar” reminded me of.

And I am glad despite all the struggles things have worked out well for Moehringer. He won the Pulitzer in 2000 for feature writing and was a finalist for his article "Resurrecting the Champ," which originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times Magazine. The article talked about his attempts to track down former boxing champ "Battlin'" Bob Satterfield and is now a movie “Resurrecting the champ” starring Samuel L. Jackson and Josh Hartnett.

2007-08-06T04:34:00.000-04:00

Jindabyne (Not A Review)

Update: I am taking a bit of a break being summer and all, be back soon. I will visit your blogs though. Take care and enjoy the rest of the summer.

Jindabyne, is the rather unusual name of a movie that I saw a couple of weeks back at TheatreN in Wlimington, DE. I was drawn to this movie for two reasons, I love watching independent cinema and I saw the trailer of this movie while watching the lovely French comedy “The Valet” and was intrigued by the story and the mystery that it seemed to convey “The place has a magical/supernatural hold on the 4 male protagonists” the voice over declared. This film was also directed by Ray Lawrence who was also responsible for the excellent Lantana.

Jindabyne ( 36°24′S, 148°37′E) is a town in New South Wales, Australia that overlooks Lake Jindabyne near the Snowy Mountains, in Snowy River Shire. It is a popular holiday resort, especially in winter, due to its proximity to ski resorts in the Kosciuszko National Park, including Thredbo and Perisher Blue.

It is in this town and the region it is in that this film’s story unfolds. The movie begins with a local tradesman sitting behind some rocks off of a desolate road in his truck scanning the road for his prey and she is coming up the road. Cutting back to the town we get to know these 4 working class guys Stewart (Gabriel Byrne) Carl (John Howard), Rocco (Stelios Yiakmis) and Billy (Simon Stone) and their families including Stewart’s wife Claire (Laura Linney), Carl’s wife Jude (Deborra-Lee Furness) as they get ready for their annual fishing trip into the isolated high country. It is this trip and their discovery on it that will alter their lives and those of their loved ones that constitute the central theme of this movie which is based on a short story by Raymond Carver.

The four fishing buddies find the bound and abused body of an Aboriginal woman in the river and rather than make the trek back to where they left their vehicle and report the find as it is late, they decide to spend the next day fishing. It is not just the fact that they don’t report this crime, but Stewart wades in to the water and tethers the victim to the bank with his fishing rope around her ankles as they are worried the body might get washed downstream and in the falls.

Done with their fishing and pictures with their catch they head back and inform the police.

Stewart gets into bed with Claire and for a moment we think as if he is going to tell her about what happened but instead we see him just sleep, he seems untroubled by what has happened as are his friends.

Claire find out what happened next morning when a police detective stops by to ask Stewart a few questions and she is justifiably livid that he never bothered to tell her even as he grabbed her breast and kissed her as he got into bed. We see similar reactions from the wives/girlfriends of the remaining guys. The difference being Claire single handedly (along with her son) in an attempt to make amends raises money from the people in the town for the poor family to pay for the girls funeral, the rest of the parties involved just seem to want to move on although they seem sorry about their thoughtless act.

Their callous act is soon nationwide news as their pictures get plastered across the newspapers and on television and they become targets of scorn from the townsfolk. But it is not that simple, especially when the victim is a young Aborigine, especially a woman. The state of the indigenous people of Australia has been well documented (link 1, 2) and it is not a surprise that this is a factor in the response to the crime which the viewer will see take the form of callous comments from some of the citizenry and the investigating officers. Some of the outrage from the indigenous community takes the form of attacks and vandalism against the four fishing buddies.

Claire incensed at this whole sorry affair resolves to get to the bottom of it and it drives things to the point where it creates a rift between the families and Stewart, where she finally decides to leave him and attend the victim’s funeral despite her past attempts to reach out to them being rebuffed.

Things come to a head at the funeral. will Claire’s attempt to make amends be welcomed? What about Stewart? Will he be able to stop the slow downward spiral his life threatens to take? What about the rest of his friends? What about the killer who is a part of the community?

These will be answered if any of you are curious enough to see the movie. Gabriel Byrne and Laura Linney are brilliant, especially Laura Linney whose portrayal of a woman whose faith in her husband and marriage are shaken to its foundations stands out. The rest of the cast is great too and these characters (even the relatively minor players) are not cardboard cutouts but richly created in all their strengths and foibles, and this may have contributed to making the movie a bit long, but it also made for a more rewarding experience from my point of view. I loved the region in which the movie has been filmed and it was a treat to watch.

I liked the movie and if you have a couple of hours free to catch this one in the theater or on DVD then do try to catch it. It received a 65% freshness rating at rotten tomatoes. As per them

Rotten Tomatoes awards the Certified Fresh accolade to theater releases reviewed by 40 or more Approved Tomatometer Critics (including 5 critics from the Cream of the Crop) that score at least 75% or higher on the Tomatometer. A film remains Certified Fresh unless its Tomatometer falls below 60%. Reserved for the best-reviewed films, the Certified Fresh accolade constitutes a seal of approval, synonymous with quality

So make what you will about that and my “Not a review”.

Having seen both Jindaybye and Lantana, I have to say that the latter was a much better movie and far more engrossing, but then again it was a different movie. This is a movie that will haunt you for a while after you finish watching it. It is a movie about the rituals (ancient and/or modern) that constitute the rhythms of a community and explores the effects of love, grief and loss upon it’s members and the community as a whole.

2007-08-03T10:02:00.000-04:00

Don't have a lot to say..

What a fine man eh? link

Bush Insults BBC Political Editor at Press Conference

By E&P StaffPublished: August 01, 2007 10:50 AM ET
NEW YORK At a recent press conference at Camp David, President George Bush insulted BBC political editor Nick Robinson, the Daily Mirror reports.

Robinson, who has asked Bush pointed questions in the past such as whether the president was “in denial” over the Iraq war, posed a question to Bush about whether he could trust visiting British Prime Minister Gordon Brown not to “cut and run” from Iraq.

Bush replied with a dismissal: “Are you still hanging around?”

Later on, Bush poked fun at the bare-pate of Robinson, joking, “You’d better cover up your bald head, it’s getting hot out.”

The respected British reporter shot back, “I didn’t know you cared.”

Bush responded with a cool, “I don’t.” The Mirror reports that Bush then “snorted disdainfully” and “walked away to laughter.”

Cool Ad

Ads Of The World

Eurostar: Its Summertime In London