Bookoholic again.

Well, with my frequent trips to fort I often spend 2 hrs a day in the train. From thane to VT and then back. Since I go at non-peak hours, the trains are not crowded and I can put up my feet and chill. And I realize thats just the loveliest time to catch up on my reading ! Since I am in the train, I dont feel guilty that I am whiling away time with a storybook. As it is, there is nothin else to do in the train right. Hmm, i really love reading.

Well, but owing to my current focus on positive thinking and happy vibes :) , I decided to stay away from my classic favourites - dark, murky, gothic thrillers, mostly with a cop and a psycho. I have the same taste in movies also ( Think Zodiac, Hitchcock movies, Les Diaboliques) . But I wish, I werent attracted to such kind of stuff. I mean it doesnt exactly cheer you up. It is disturbing and yet so engrossing at the same time. Hmm. So nowadays,
I consciously look for funny, light movies and books. Like the last few movies that I downloaded were - Forgetting Sarah Marshall, I love you man, Music and Lyrics etc.


I am doing the same wid books. After trying a bit of Wodehouse, I decided my current favourite genre is chick lit. Blame Sophie Kinsella. Shopaholic and Sister was simply fun! Its kinda stupid at places ( of course, with a protagonist like that! ) . After Shopaholic, I decided to try more of this stuff. But "Fast friends" by Jill Mansell was disappointing for me. Its not funny, and its full of romantic BS. But I m really enjoying this change. Though from yesterday I have been fighting the temptation to read Martha Grimm's Hotel Paradise. The same way that I have been stopping myself from downloading "Dogtooth", some fascinating greek movie about an extremely weird family. I know it will be sad and weird, but I am so curious about it. BUT With a mind as delicate and impressionable as mine, I am better off with Kinsella and Wodehouse.

Wanna see wht Hotel Paradise is abt. See the description : "A neglected lake, covered with water lilies. A once fashionable, now faded resort. A derelict house full of secrets, uninhabited for almost half a century. The death of a twelve-year-old girl forty years in the past. And another girl who becomes obsessed with this death. With her knack for encouraging adults to reminisce, she begins to piece together puzzles from the past and present." Sounds interesting. Well, will let you know if I read it.

Hilarious french comedy : DEMANDEZ LA PERMISSION AUX ENFANTS !

Hi
Saw this movie last night on TV5 Monde. It was damn amusing and really crazy at places. Story goes like this:
There are three families, and all the parents are fed up
of their spoilt bratty kids. The kids are all snooty and dont
appreciate their parents, and one day the parents decide
that enough is enough. With the help of a child psychologist, they plot revenge against the little devils.

What follows is a lot of bizarre n wacky comedy. Ofcourse, things are exaggerated since its a movie. You need to excuse that to enjoy it. Good family fun.

The Reader and Vicky Christina Barcelona

Hey
Watched two movies on the weekend, The Reader and Vicky Christina Barcelona.
Although the first one is all arty-oscar type movie, I was more entertained by
the 2nd one, which is a light hearted look at the confusion of intimate relationships..
monogamy or polygamy or cheating..choose choose..good boring dependable guy vs sexy hot "free-spirited" guy?? choose choose..lol.

The Reader is an okay movie, but its kinda slow and little boring at times. The story is
interesting enough, - It tells the story of Michael Berg, a German lawyer who as a teenager in the late 1950s had an affair with an older woman, Hanna Schmitz, who then disappeared only to resurface years later as one of the defendants in a war crimes trial stemming from her actions as a guard at a Nazi concentration camp in the later years of World War II. Michael realizes that Hanna is keeping a personal secret she believes is worse than her Nazi past — a secret which, if revealed, could help her at the trial.

But although the movie had a grim, sentimental tone, it didnt really move me. Kate Winslet cries
when she is climaxing and when she listens to the choir, but since you dont know her that well, it doesnt touch you. Its funny that she keeps calling him "kid", and then proceeds to fuck him !?!
Hehe. Since the "kid" is taller and bigger than her, it doesnt look odd. Hmm, the intimate scenes are nicely shot. And the kid is sweet. The second part of the movie with the war trial and comments on the holocaust was not that much interesting, as thats where it gets kinda sad. Some people argue that this movie asks the audience to sympathize with a Nazi... I am not sure
what the director was trying to say, but I found the ending somewhat weird. Imagine you are
responsible for someone's family's death and you leave your money to this person, and expect them to take it?


Vicky Christina Barcelona, being Woody Allen's romcom, was fun to watch. Its beautiful to look at. I mean, they have shot the movie in this gorgeous spanish place all golden and exotic. You will really feel like going to Spain when you see it. And the characters are all painters, writers, poets. And the ruggedly handsome(..not much) spanish hero with a sexy name, Juan Antonio, has dialogues like, "Maria Elena used to say that only unfulfilled love can be romantic."Plotline : Two girlfriends on a summer holiday in Spain become enamored with the same painter, unaware that his ex-wife, with whom he has a tempestuous relationship, is about to re-enter the picture. Its an okay movie, but visually very pleasing. I enjoyed it :)

The dead girl - dark drama

Every other day I search rottentomatoes.com to find movies with a high rating, especially thrillers, thats how I decide to download them. Well, The dead girl was classified as thriller, but a thriller it is not. Yes, there is a murder, and there is a serial killer. But thats not the focus of the movie. Its a short emotional account of sad, smothered lives that are positively affected by one unfortunate death.

"The dead girl" is made up of five stories, five perspectives. It shows how a single event, affects different people's lives. Its a very good movie.and it gets better with every story. Although dark and grim, its engrossing, Not that depressing and fast-paced with numerous female characters who have some real problems in life.

The Stranger (Toni Collette) is a timid girl living a lonely life with her abusive dominating mother. She is the one who
finds the dead girl's body.

The Sister ( Rose Bryne ) is a reclusive pretty girl, pushed
into isolation and clinical depression by her family's relentless search for her sister, who
had disappeared 15 years back. She works in a morgue, she is the one
who does post-mortem or something on the dead girl, and finds a familiar birthmark on her.

The Wife is about a fiery middle-aged wife in an unfulfilling marriage with a husband who often disappears for days, and comes back with scratches on his body every time. This is the only story with some suspense and thrills.

The Mother is a moving account of a woman who is informed by the police that her daughter
( the dead girl) who had fleed home when she was 16, fell prey to a serial killer. When she meets her dead daughter's lesbian lover, she makes a shocking discovery. I felt this was the best among the five.


The Dead girl is a flash-back to the last day of the dead girl, Krista's life.

Its definitely worth a watch. Watch it at a quite time, like at night.

Gmail Signature now allows images!!

Gmail has launched its richmedia signature feature today, and I want to be among the firsts to use it!!

Ishqiya - i loved it

Generally watching a faded, pirated, dvd parlour-type copy of movie, with sleepy eyes can substantially diminish the enjoyment of the experience. Not so with Ishqiya. Its such a wonderful creation. During the first five minutes or so, when Vidya Balan is making rotis
for her thug husband, I thought this was not worth staying up. But starting from Arshad's
parrot joke right to the open ending, I was glued.
Khalujaan (Naseerudin shah) and Babban ( Arshad warsi ) make a nice funny pair. One charming and chivalrous, and the other a rough unshaven flirt. I think the casting for this movie was damn good. Imagine, if they had cast Amitabh and Abhishek instead ! Lolz.
I looooved Vidya Balan as Krishna. She has managed to look and act very alluring in whatever wardrobe they gave to her rustic widow character. And her role is also quite cool.

The best thing in the movie has to be the humour. Theres one episode in the movie about a cheating husband secretly meeting his chinky girlfriend that had us all in splits. God, it was so funny! I still laugh when I remember it. Also, the dialogues are very good.

Well, additionally, what makes this movie so good, is the collage of music, from old hindi songs to some original tracks. 'Dil toh baccha hai' is my favourite. But thankfully, 'Ibna batuta' was missing from my copy. (hehe)
All in all, Ishqiya was a pleasant surprise. Entertaining and memorable. Recommended.