Life in the holidays - 1

4th June, 2009.

Its been 8 days since I've been "totally" free, and well, already some monotony has started to creep in. This post essentially just to remind me that I am to do something useful with my time. So what have I been upto? Here I am listing all that below:

1. The Godfather trilogy: A wonderful depiction of the Cosa Nostra and the Italian Mafia. I particularly enjoyed the first movie, although I found all three to be equally well-made. Sofia Coppola lacked a certain charm with her role in the third, but one also gets used to her as the movie progresses. Marlon Brando in it has done justice to his role, and Robert De Niro did very well in the second. Robert Duvall as Tom Hagen was one character I felt sorry for he was constantly abused for being non-Italian, for not being a blood relative to the 'family' and because of the issues Michael Corleone had with trusting the ones closest to him. My rating 9.5/10,9.5/10,9/10 for the three movies respectively.

2. Another Robert Duvall film which I happened to catch was Thank You For Smoking. Its the sort of movie that messes you up a little bit, makes you question your moral system and knows how to put up an argument. The protagonist is Aaron Eckhart, who we later saw in the role of D.A. Harvey Dent, in the unforgettable epic The Dark Knight. I'd recommend it. Rating: 9/10

3. The Big Fish: Interesting concept, adapted from the novel by Daniel Wallace of the same name. I first read about it after hearing the song, "How I Go" by Yellowcard. I loved the song the first time I heard it, and only after almost a year after first listening to it, got down to watching the movie. Thoroughly loved it. My rating:9.5/10.

4. Flight of the Conchords - This TV show is a blast. Features two New-Zealand blokes in the US, Bret and Jermaine are the two-member band that try to make ends meet, find a girl for themselves, and play at gigs, breaking into hilarious sing-song routines every time. A brilliant comedy. 9/10.

5. The Motherhood River - A Chinese short children's story, which is one in a series of books titled Journey to the West, by Yuan Fang. More here.
The story is as the title says - about a river that makes anyone who drinks it pregnant. A solution to this conundrum is in the form of another river, drinking whose water aborts the child.
It was a pretty unique story with the monkey, pig, friar and the king as the main characters. Its a bit funny, especially the illustrations of the pig bloated and squirming, screaming he's going into labour etc... but overall a bit ridiculous at my age. :-)

6. Presently reading Imam and the Indian by Amitav Ghosh. Its a collection of short stories which he wrote sporadically over the course of several years and in between the various works that he published.
My personal favourite from the ones that I have read till now is The ghosts of Mrs. Gandhi, in which he gives his personal account of the '84 genocide, why he could not bring himself to write about it till now, and why other writers from that time are also reluctant to do the same. However, it makes for some sad reading, one that left me dejected and angry. Time may pass by, but such instances keep occuring, with the assistance of the official bodies that have been put in charge to prevent them. The '84 riots and 2002 riots were both genocides, mass-murders that were organized and planned attempts at eliminating certain minority groups and the fact that we continue to attach the misnomer of 'riots' to these events shows that we have accepted them as that, and given the guilty an easy escape route. In fact, there is plenty of material available online with regard to those horrific days when these mass-murders took place.

My present addiction is Lexulous, that online scrabble game that was made by the Agarwala brothers as Scrabulous, which got itself into legal troubles for trademark infringement. Its an entertaining way of passing time, and helps improve thy vocab, no? ;-)

Adios!