This is a video I made a couple of months ago (in Nov, 2008) immediately after the Lahore -- Hyderabad ICL semi-final… has to be one of the greatest catches I’ve seen in 20-odd years of watching cricket!
(Music: Carmina Burana from O Fortuna by Carl Orff)
A video I culled from a stand-up show by Bill Maher -- one of my favourite comedians and social satirists -- his new documentary "Religulous" is a must-see!
Craig Ferguson is just about the best comedian / host / social commentator around right now in the US… unscripted monologues, insane humour, wicked jibes; he’s got ‘em all…. However, once in a while, he comes up with something like this…
Been busy.. or to quote Stephen King (or King as Richard Bachman)…. "I been as busy as a one-legged man in an ass-kickin’ contest"…. corny I know, but that line never fails to crack me up… come to think of it, I never fail to crack me up… but that one is reserved for another entry sometime…
Sourced some more movies this week…. and saw Reservoir Dogs… again… the scene where Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen) hums and dances to "Stuck in the Middle" by Stealers Wheel while torturing the cop is one of the great moments of cinema….
Bo Bice still rocks!!! This week’s performance, especially the a capella rendition of In a Dream by Badlands, pretty much ensured that he makes it…. I know this sounds soppy and nebbish and screaming-crazed-fan like… but can”t help it! I think the dude’s really talented….
Had a very lively discussion about 80”s Hindi flicks, especially one’s starring Mithun Chakraborty in an e-group last week…. some of the guys, including me, got really nostalgic about the stuff that DD passed off as entertainment on Sunday Evening Specials…. in the mid 80”s, when Amitabh starred in movies like Shehenshah, Toofan and Jaadugar, when Chunky Pandey was monkeying around, when Govinda danced at frentic pace to Ghazal type music and Shabbir Kumar and Mohd. "Munna" Aziz were the best known playback singers – there was only one beacon of light that lit up the Hindi film landscape – Mithun Da – he strode like a Colossus over the B-Movie world in movies like Surakshaa, Disco Dancer, Dance Dance, Kasam Paida Karne Wale Ki, and countless others…..
And then there were the other flicks that most people have not even heard of….. movies like Watan ke Rakhwale, Maa Kasam, Jung, Janta ki Adalat, Aadmi, Goondaraj, Sone pe Suhaaga (in which Kimi Katkar or "Khatpar" is an Olympic gold medallist)… also the big 80”s action flicks.. generally starring Dharmendra….. Hukumat, Kaala Dhanda Gore Log (which featured a mongoloid-featured Amrish Puri and a frog eating Chinese giant!), Elaan-e-Jung…. Aag ka Gola, Aag hi Aag (Chunky’s debut)… Loha…. Zalzala…. Shapath… Gazab….
Anyone for the Ramsay bros.?…. Purani Haveli, Tehkhana, Purana Mandir, Veerana and the immortal Do Gaz Zameen Ke Neeche…… brings back memories……. "nakeeta jaago" was the immortal line from Veerana – and that heralded the entry of Rajesh Vivek – (the psychic cricketer with a long beard in Lagaan) into Hindi movies!! I was so fascinated by Veerana that I used to get the local video library guy to gimme video cassettes of all those Ramsay movies in the series and after a point got sick of them. Purani Haveli, Darwaaza, etc…. There was this Mithunda horror movie – Bees Saal Baad. Dimple Kapadia as a ghost was awesome – she wears a white crepe negligee type of dress. Oooh la la! There’s this scene where Dimple”s arms start extending the length of the room to strangle someone …. brilliant!…
I was a big fan of the southie-directed flicks which mostly starred Jeetendra…. Dosti Dushmani, Swarg Se Sundar… Pataal Bhairavi… and the two greatest… Himmatwala and Qaidi….. awesome!!!… Qaidi was based on Rambo: First Blood…. there was a scene in it where Jeetu literally flies thru the jungle by jumping down a hill… totally god level!!!…..
Ekta Kapoor gets her soap factory idea from the Jeetu series. They contained the same sets in Padmalaya Studios in Hyd, same character artistes, same director (usually Purnachandra Rao), same music director (Bappi) and they churned out movie after movie. Movies like Maqsad (absolute corny dialogues- Asrani tells Amjad Khan " lagta hai tera woh bahut chota ha". AK quickly covers his p*n*s. Asrani quickly corrects and says – abe woh nahin, Dil! Dil!"), Justice Chaudhari, Mawali, Tohfa (Shakti Kapoor”s – Aooo Lolita and the matkas with Jumping Jack”s jhatkas) and Suhagan. Qaidi was slightly different – it did not have Sridevi or Jayaprada. It had Hema Malini and Shotgun. Even Dilip Kumar got conned into acting in one of the southie hindi flicks…. he was the BMOC (big man on campus) of this village… dhoti-kurta-angocha- and choti getup….. there was this mind blowing scene where corrals a rampaging bull with a length of nada…. I have this vague feeling it was Dharmadhikari…. or was it?….. As for dialogues… Kadar Khan’s gaalis were absolutely phenomenal….."chaar din purani baasi khichdi mein basey hue keeday"….
Recently watched “Roger & Me” and “The Big One”, Michael Moore’s documentaries on big business in America. “Roger & Me” is about Moore’s hometown of Flint, Michigan; home of General Motors and how the closure of the GM plant there affects the town and its people. The Roger in the title refers to Roger Smith, the then Chairman of GM and the film ostensibly charts the travails of Moore as he unsuccessfully tries to meet Roger (kinda James Bond-ish, ain”t it?)… to get an explanation about the closure… and why GM is closing the plant even though it has made record profits…..
“The Big One” is about the 47 city book tour that Moore undertook to promote his book “Downsize This: Random Threats from an Unarmed American”.
Both the flicks take some heavy-duty pot shots at corporate America and have lots of genuinely very funny moments…. then there are the excellent soundtracks… good ole rock ‘n roll and country… and Moore indulges in some pretty raucous shenanigans in both….. in “The Big One”, an especially hilarious scene is where Moore marches into the Johnson Controls plant in Milwaukee (which is about to close down and open up in Mexico) and presents to some Manager a cheque for 85 cents (the first hour’s salary for the Mexican labour they”re about to employ)……
But amongst all this, are some really sobering moments that made me stop and think…. especially poignant to me were the scenes in Roger & Me where the townsfolk go about trying to make Flint a tourist attraction with an air of quietly desperate optimism…. a scheme that fails spectacularly….. apart from the ones obviously meant to tug at heartstrings like watching people get evicted from their homes on Christmas Eve….
And in The Big One…. an interview on radio where Moore shows to the jock a photograph of the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing… gutted building and all that…. and another photograph of a building in downtown Flint a few years after the plant closure…. the photographs are virtually identical… I’ve got the book and trust me.. they are…. and he asks the jock… "tell me Studs… what you see in Oklahoma is definitely terrorism… when you blow up a building and kill 168 people in it…. but what do you call it.. when you politely ask the people inside the building to leave and then blow it up?" … ”cause sure as hell these folks are gonna die too… maybe not in one blow like in Oklahoma… but over time, they’re gonna die … of drugs… of crime… of suicide.. of abuse…."
As a product of a business family and business school, I’ve grown up believing that profit is all that matters…. "maximizing shareholder value" is the mantra to live by….. big business making big profits is good for the nation… good for you and me… that everybody fending for their own economic interest is how society progresses….. that collectivization of the workforce is evil (and I do not use the word lightly here..)…. but then one thinks: How much is enough?… a billion dollars in profit vs a billion-and-a-half????
Think about it.
