Bombay Meri Jaan

We have been visiting Mumbai for past 25 days now and I can't help but get impressed by some of the things that I see here. I also can't help but compare them to the things in US and I get even more impressed. Here is a list of few of them. Note that we are seeing changed Mumbai after 4 years so it is more shocking for us than most others.
Gyms and personal trainers - They are more and more common. I heard many housewives are going regularly to gym with personal trainers
Cellphones, ringtones, and music - Most people on the street have ear plugs in one (or both) the ears and are listening to FM or personal music collection. Cellphone robberies are on rise. I saw more warnings about cellphones than about your wallets!
Helmet awareness is very high - Lots of people are driving bikes with helmets
No for plastic bags - I was impressed when normal shopkeepers refused to give plastic bags because of government regulation. This is very recent in US! I was impressed to see the Eco-awareness in busy Mumbai.
Spending money - People are spending money more than what I have seen before. They are using shopping malls, cool cabs, buying cars, building skyscrapers (and buying homes in them), taking vacations, and so on
Less dependent on oil - Mumbaikars have successfully transitioned to CNG and as a result the pollution is lower than what it was 4 years ago. Now there are cars that can operate both on CNG and petrol (BTW, petrol prices are twice that of 4 years ago.)
Traffic is a mess - It took us 1.5 hours to travel 27 kms on a highway. On some other day, we spent 2 hours on the same road. Lots of cars, cabs, rickshaws, bikes
Trains are overcrowded - I took Thane local around 6:15 pm and I was at the same door, where I got in, till Bhandup! There was not chance of moving inside the train. Thankfully, I could breath! I can not imagine getting into Kalyan or Asangaon local!
New generation is more religious - Vashtu shastra, stones, gems, horoscore, puja, guruji are all on rise. I have seen people adopting this as a full time job!
Improved presentability - People are more cautious about what they wear and how they look

Run Lola Run, Sliding Doors and Happy Accidents

These three movies are a crash course for me on a quantum physics that explains theory of multiple universes and time travel.

Let me say this first. There is a line in Happy Accidents that "Time is a personal thing" and I completely agree with that. The character says after that "how bad times seem to last longer than good times" (more discussion at some other time). The point is that I completely believe in time travel, parallel universes and stuff like that.

I like Run Lola Run at two levels.

At a practical level, it shows the consequences of making certain choices and how it affects your life, your loved one's life and the world. Sometimes things work out and sometimes they don't. And the last two things have very little do do with each other.

At a metaphysical level, I like it because it shows that course of time can be altered with extreme emotional response. ("break the causal chain" as in Happy Accidents) I would really like to believe that. A lot of people have said that if you believe in something then you find a way to it. Run Lola Run is an extreme example of that.

In RLR, things happen in sequence. In Sliding Doors, they happen in parallel. It is also about your choices and how they affect the world. But the most beautiful part of the movie is that it shows connections between parallel universes or rather some synch ups, like when Gweneth Paltrow's character becomes pregnant and when the character has an accident. It shows that things do get transferred between these universes at these extreme emotional levels.

The final scene in the lift is the best one. I also like it for some other reason (which is based on Eternal Sunshine of Spotless Mind ... discussion for later)

Happy Accidents takes one step further. It shows that time travel is possible. It also shows that people in the future have proved theory of parallel universes. Finally, it shows that course of the future events can be changed by an extreme emotional response like loss of loved one.

If you believe in movies then you don't need science and it all makes sense!

Pulp Fiction, Memento and Mulholland Drive

Three movies that played with the sequence of frames and I am a great fan of all of them.

Pulp fiction randomizes the sequence and became popular for the experimentation.

Memento reverses the flow of the movie (although there is a storyline that goes in the right order). I guess that the point the director is making was that the world would look distorted if you see it from the main character's point of view. Throughout the movie, We are with the main character, we sympathize with him and we believe his story. But reality is very different. I would rate Memento higher than Pulp Fiction because it was not just a random sequence but there was something deeper there.

Mulholland Drive beats all of them. It is so confusing that I had to read the story on the laptop while watching the movie to stay focused. But, I think it makes a lot of sense if you see the movie as if it is a dream (and that is what it is). It has all the things that we see in our dreams:
1) distorted visualization
2) weird symbolism
3) part where the wishes come true
4) threads of reality in between
I think the director has done a great job in conveying all these things, particularly because it is not very easy to do that. I think it is the one and only movie that has even attempted to do something like this.

The thing that makes this movie the best is that the distorted visualization originates from the complicated storyline (which is a dream) and it does a great job of conveying the actual story through the visualization.

Italian Job (old) and Ocean's 11

Continuing the tradition of comparing two movies ...

But before going ahead, what makes a good "con" movie?

- ensemble of great cast
- complex plot (a lot should happen behind the camera)
- minimum dialogs, great oneliners, or even very stupid dialogs

(Of course) Both of these movies pass this test ( I am talking about old "Italian Job" here. If you want to know my thoughts on the new one then skip the blog and go to the end.) ! And I think these movies are the two best con movies made .... ever.

I think first two points are obvious but I want to say something about the "dialogs".

Italian Job has this great scene about "Annette" which is completely unnecessary and stupid, but nevertheless it very important. It has great oneliners like

"everybody in the world is bent"
"gentlemen its long walk back to England and its that way"
"we must arrange a funeral"
"Look happy stupid bastards ... we one, didn't we?"

Ocean's 11 is pretty compact, it does not have scenes like "Annette" but it stays very tight on dialogs. For example ..
After they bug the casino, Livingston Dell almost gets caught. The reaction to that from Clooney and Pitt is "Oh! well?" .... "yes!" .... that's it!
When Cheadle comes to tell them that his plan to blow the grid has failed, Clooney looks at Pitt and says "We can always .." and Pitt says "By tomorrow? no way".
Elliott Gould's "who do have in mind?"
Great stuff ...

It's very difficult to pick the best movie from these two movies.
Ocean's 11 could have been the best but they decided to make a sequel ..... why on earth someone thinks things like that??
On the other hand, Italian Job ends with a possibility of a great sequel but no one has dared to make one .... that is a plus point.

But Italian Job is all about making money.
And Ocean's 11 is also about that but is more about "screwing the guy who is screwing you wife" so it gets a plus point.

So, they stay at the top ... both of them !

There is big list of worse con movies like Heist and Italian Job (new) but why waste time on them?

crash and syriana

Two of the best movies from last year ....

I saw Crash after a string of really really bad movies and I just loved it. After that, I told everyone about it and bored them to death.

The thing that I liked about the movie was that there was no hero. People were people. They did good things and they did bad things just like all of us. However, the central theme of the movie was that "everyone is good at heart", that is, they do bad things because bad things happen to them. ( Although I want to believe in that, I somehow can't. ) It made me aware of my racial biases and I thought that I should do something about it. So, there was a closure of some sort after the discomfort of watching the movie.

It was the best movie of the year .... till Syriana came along. After seeing Syriana, I was sure that Crash had resigned from the top.

Comparing it to Crash, Syriana was about people too. They were people in the movie, no heros and no villains. Sometimes they did good things and sometimes they did bad things.

The difference was that there was no message there and there was no feel-good sense. It portrayed things as they are are and it left the part of "finding a message" to the viewers. It made me aware of how my life is controlled by big industries and a part of my existence was responsible for keeping them profitable. The best part was that there was no closure for this thought .... and this is what made it the best movie for me.