imeanSURAJ

Obama has come to Cisco, Bangalore, as a part of inaugurating a certain technology department. So I go there as well hoping to catch a glimpse. Once all the fan fare is over he quietly goes out from the back and sits on the floor in the balcony staring at the stars, expecting no one. I accidentally bump into him and apologize. As I am about to go so that he could have his privacy back, he asks me to stay. I stay and we make a small talk, but fantastically the small talk snowballs into a good conversation. He asks me, do I want to have dinner with him, I say sure. While we are walking by the backdoor exit, we find a good corner to sit and have our dinner, he opens his brief case and apparently his wife has prepared him a ham sandwich. I tell him, I haven’t brought my dinner from home, so he shares a bite with me. We finish our dinner and he thinks of breaking the protocol a little more, he says lets sneak out for a walk. I just keep nodding along for whatever he asks. And as we ar...

Sleep is the act of letting go and letting things be. During the day when we start off, we slowly take off in our graph of consciousness and subsequently our control over things that we want to be right. At the start of the day we tend to walk loose. Slowly with time we start taking control of our walk and walk straight, then take control of our expressions which was loose like our walk at the start of the day. We take control of the words we speak, we take control on the way we move our hands and we become more aware of our surrounding. So with time our control as well as our consciousness increases.  Sleeping is the act of letting it all go. Hence falling asleep is much easier for the ones who don’t take control on a lot of things and are casual about relatively more things than some other guy who falls asleep late. Because taking control is like tightening our fists with as many fingers as the number of things we take control of. So the act of letting go is taking off o...

This film only reminded me of why I should stop watching Bollywood, except for the few that come out once in a while. The film is ridden with gaping loop holes and laughable sequences of action (like when Rohit's character and Hrithik's character have a go at each other, turn by turn). The dialogues are written as if the actors are dialogue writers themselves, or they just watch a lot of Bollywood to be so cheesy to give out such punch liners even when they could shoot directly instead of fighting with dialogues after every hit. The film has very superficially etched characters and a plot line so predictable, even the girl i watched with could predict from half a mile (excuse my sexism). The usual over stylized Sanjay Gupta film. A generous 4/10 from me. Hrithik has improved in his acting, but the benchmark of a good acting is good acting, not the actor himself, after all.

The film is collection of cliches if you ask me. Plenty unnecessary scenes, very sticking out comedies which doesn't mix well in the subtlety of the story and an ending that every sports film has had, the person in the ring remembering the training session which has a lot of emotional nostalgia attached. The only thing good about it, is the wrestling choreography well executed by the actors and the overall acting. A potential good film turned into a mass movie compromising art. I am not saying its wrong, but I will only be a critic here. For me, its not as good as it has been hyped, strictly 6/10. P.S, Chak De! India is still the bloody best sports film, for its restrained acting, cutting through so many issues without steering the whole film towards that direction, editing, hockey cinematography, more authentic sports politics and no unnecessary forced humor.

If you look at the rich and sophisticated, they always emanate a very limited set of expressions and movements with their body language. The rich, though practice that, with time and surrounding. But how is a limited expressive nature considered a better virtue? It generally attracts more praises than when being over-reactive to things does. The more the places and the people you meet, the more one gets used to various kinds of experiences and the deeper one's understanding of life; hence, naturally eliminating the element of curiosity/surprise/shock from various scenarios and also, thus generating a cold sort of response. When a person doesn’t react much he is deemed as matured because normally it is a case of “been there/done that”. When a guy A in a club, shows off his BMW M6, and all his friends react with an open mouth, shaking their hands in its awe, except one. This guy B stays just the same, only nodding his head in acknowledgement. Naturally, guy A will respect guy B...

This feeling of anticipation coming from something which is fast advancing towards a certain goal of action always ignites a certain amount of tension. For example if a window is shutting down due to the wind, and we are at a distance watching it get closer and closer towards getting shut, at a good speed, it will give us a chill, a tension, because there is an anticipation towards the whole action which can be determined by the flow of the events. If the window closes with a strong shut without our attention, we will probably look at the window once and carry on, but if we keep looking at it advance closer and closer, we get a mild tension. It is in fact the predictability that gives the whole chill. Alfred Hitchcock Another example, when a couple is having sex and the male partner slowly advances his hands touching her stomach towards her vagina, it will give her a stream of electric shocks even before a few inches of getting there making her take a deep sigh. The antici...

A beautifully directed film by the debutante Robert Eggers, based on a script that he wrote himself. I rate it above Don't Breathe or Conjuring 2, in horror genre this year, and also above last year's debutante film from the director Joel, The Gift. This film takes time to develop its grip, which in its own way is interesting, and boy, the wait is totally worth it! One of my favorite scenes in the film is the mother breast feeding a crow thinking it’s her own dead child who's come back. Even with a plot related to witchcraft it delivers enough story to justify its credibility. The sound design, the dark sometimes dry brown shadowed cinematography is a treat to photography lovers and the end will leave you with an absolute, "WOW", moment.