More movies

I watched "The Recruit" yesterday starring Al Pacino and Colin Farrel. Al Pacino is great as always but Colin Farrel seemed to keep right up with him. The story was about a guy who is recruited by a CIA trainer (Pacino) and is put through a rigorous training where he is always told that "everything is a test" and that you shouldn’t trust anything. He meets a girl during training whom he seems to be attracted to and a series of incidents seem to bring them even closer together culminating in him washing out of the academy because he breaks down under torture when his torturers hint that the girl had been tortured too. The movie goes on with the story but what interested me was the whole trust and love issue.

As you probably know, I’m a sucker for a love story. This wasn’t exactly a love story but I was intrigued by how the relationship developed under the conditions of mistrust that they go through. Neither of them can trust the other because they’ve been conditioned not to (and later on in the story, they each bug the other one – each with valid motives of their own of course …) and the problem is that distrust seems to have a sort of a feedback cycle where a tiny doubt can feed upon itself and grow into bigger and bigger suspicions till you are totally sure that the other person is who you *think* they are or that they are doing what you *think* they are. This probably is (to me) one of the toughest tests for love – if you could survive that and come out feeling confident about the person you love, then you are probably sure in your love. Of course, you may say that it would be even better not to distrust at all since trust is the basis for a relationship but unfortunately, we are dealing with humanity here and I am not sure that anybody totally trusts anybody else.

Of course, that starts off an interesting train of thought. Is that true? I said that *I* think that nobody totally trusts anybody else and I realized that that was my opinion. Is that the case with everybody? In my case, I implicitly trust everybody I meet *but* with a reservation – I keep on the lookout to see if they lie to me and if they do, then I don’t trust them from then onwards. Does that negate my earlier statement? I don’t think so because if I trusted the people I meet totally, then I wouldn’t have to be on the lookout for lies – ergo, I don’t trust people completely. But then again, the problem has been that I’ve never met anybody till now that I could trust totally in certain situations. Everybody that I thought that I could trust turned out to be not so trustworthy in the long run. Yes, there is still hope though – I still have hope that there will be people in my life to whom I can totally open up to because that is as important to me as love but only time will tell if this can be so … Rome wasn’t built in a day and trust certainly takes more than a day :p

Of movies and moments …

"The difference between men and boys is the lessons that they learn – my father taught me" says the lead character in "Biker Boyz", a movie that I just finished watching. I’ve been struggling with certain things of late – impatience, fear, apprehension, doubt as to the future … all of this and more has been in my mind in one form or another. Sometimes I find it so hard to find my centre – my point of equilibrium. At others, I think I find it only to lose it the next day and to start the struggle to find it all over again. I guess this is always the case when life is concerned. But for some strange reason, movies seem to be my medium for discovering balance, to gain perspective and to get back on an even keel. I don’t know why this should be so, especially since I seem to find a lesson or a touchstone in the cheesiest of movies. It just is though and I’m grateful for that – I can’t imagine what life must be for somebody who doesn’t have a mechanism of their own to fall back on when they feel lost or troubled.

The funny thing is that I didn’t even want to watch "Biker Boyz" – I was too wound up, too caught up in my own worries and concerns. I sat down for the movie only because my brother was watching it and I needed something to keep my mind occupied and guess what? The movie turned out to be just what the doctor ordered. Now the thing is, I know that a movie always helps me but in this particular instance, I wasn’t even thinking of watching one because I just didn’t feel like it but now I feel much more calmer, more serene. So what was the movie about? It’s about this young guy who is out to prove himself in the world of bikers. It is a tale as old as time itself in certain ways and yet, certain elements in the movie did manage to evoke a response in me. Am I going to go into the whole movie? Heck no :p Let me just say that it has an interesting soundtrack, that I enjoyed the story and if you love bikes and bikers, you probably might enjoy it too – oh yeah, it’s got Laurence Fishburn in it :p And that reminds me of one thing that I’m going to miss soon – not being able to be at a premiere of "Matrix Reloaded". Darn it, one of the few movies that I anticipate for so long and I can’t watch it till it trickles down here through the pirated channels. Ah well … I’m off to go watch another movie 🙂

Of movies and Marvel …

I’ve been hearing about “X2” from several people – my friend Meraash had gone to see it and he says they’ve changed the story but didn’t have time to go into details. I for one will not be watching the movie (I still haven’t seen the first movie either …) since I hate watching movies based on a comic since they always seem to get it wrong – or decide to mess with the storyline to make it more acceptable .. or something :p I hate that! I grew up with comics, I know the life-stories of most of these characters as if they were my buddies, why would I want a new life story for them now? I know I’ve gone into this before but each time I see a new movie with a changed storyline, I feel like ranting :p I still haven’t seen “Spider-man” (I don’t like the organic web shooters :p), I’ve seen maybe one Superman movie and that was on TV and I’ve seen one BatMan movie because I was on a plane when they showed it and there was nothing else to watch :p Oh yeah, I’ve seen one of the early Captain America movies but that was a really crappy Cappy – pardon the expression :p

I’ve never been that much of an “X-Men” fan. Don’t get me wrong, I love some of the characters – Logan is a firm favorite even before they revealed his origin and I came to like him even more. I just like him because to me he embodies the human spirit in many ways. I love the relationships between Jean Grey and Scott (but for some reason I like them best as Redd and Slym in the far future when Apocalypse reigns supreme and they are trying to protect their son – Nathan Dayspring Summers, the boy who will be Cable) and between Remy and Rogue. I like the relationships between the different teams and I for some reason, am fascinated by Cable but this is just one facet of the Marvel universe.

I grew up with a different facet – that of Norse god’s fighting frost giants with mighty Thor and his mystic Uru hammer Mjolnir on their side; Captain America, Union Jack, the original Human Torch and others in the Invaders fighting off Nazi forces in World War II Europe; Dr. Stephen Strange, HellCat, NightCrawler and the Hulk as part of the Defenders going strange places and enjoying incredible adventures. These are the things I remember. I remember Spider-man, who has always been numero uno in the Marvel universe for me – his wise-cracking, utterly irreverent ways. I remember Tony Stark, struggling with alcoholism, burdened by a heart which could stop beating at any time and who I hoped one day would find true love with Pepper Potts (what a name BTW :p) – of course that was not to be since she married Happy and then divorced him … I don’t know what’s happening now.

I’ve always enjoyed the Marvel universe and have always gone back till the last time. When Peter David left the Hulk, when they killed off Betty Banner and when MJ was killed/lost whatever, I didn’t much like that universe at all. True, the writers were probably simply trying to keep things moving and to keep things real but who wants reality? I want the romance, the drama and the sentimentality darn it! I want to go back to the days of Don Blake and Jane Foster being in love with each other (the new incarnation – Jake Olson – had quite a few relationship problems but that was mostly due to the situation he was thrown into the last time I saw), Steve Rogers eternally dreaming of Sharon Carter, Peter Parker chasing after MJ and all the rest that went into making the Marvel universe such a wonderful place to be. I want the stories that used to make me want to read – stories where everything is alright, nobody dies and even if they do, they always come back. Reality is for the birds :p

Samuel L. Jackson and the Power of Suggestion

Hmm … that title sounds like a Harry Potter novel :p Sorry about that – I just couldn’t resist it since it seemed to fit somehow. Anyway, movies do seem to have a great power over me – the power to pull me out of whatever funk I might be in and make me laugh, clap my hands and start doing roundhouse kicks :p I was in a bit of a blue mood due to lack of sleep and an abundance of dreams (more on that on another entry if I feel up to it …) and I simply sat down to watch "Formula 51" because I had nothing better to do in the evening but the movie simply pulled me out of myself.

It’s a tale about a collection of unusual characters – people you would not normally meet in day-to-day life. A master chemist named McElroy (Samuel L. Jackson) who is on the run in England after blowing up the drug lab of his employer "The Lizard" – played by Meatloaf, whose every movie appearance I enjoy if only because I enjoy his music … this was a bigger part than he normally plays .. or at least, I remember him playing – is the main character. He is joined by a female assassin hired by the The Lizard and a British gangster who is helping McElroy and who just happens to be the former flame of the assassin. The movie is violent, fun and full of sequence which just kept me wanting more – unfortunately all the fight sequences were pretty brief. But overall, it was an interesting movie – not a deep one mind you but an interesting one … which is always not the same :p Oh the title of my post? If you watch "Formula 51", you’ll understand …

Movies and other miscellanea

What do you do when you watch a movie and it leaves you wanting to twirl and flip around in the air like in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"? :p I’d had the "Coyote Ugly" DVD for at least a couple of years but for some reason or other, never got around to watching it. I really felt in need of some good, light-hearted entertainment today after watching a couple of intense movies – first a Tamil movie and then "Carlito’s Way" – and so gave "Coyote Ugly" a try. For some reason or other, Piper Perabo reminds me so much of Jennifer Garner of "Alias" fame and while I enjoyed the movie and the soundtrack even more, I couldn’t totally get into it … OK, Piper Perabo’s appearance had no relation to my enjoyment of the movie – pardon my sentence structure :p It did however leave me thinking about a few things.

The first thing was basically related to the story line – "Coyote Ugly" is about a songwriter who goes to New York in search of her dreams. I’d just heard a couple of days back from my friend Meraash who’s also in New York currently and following his dream – to be a film maker. He worked here with me in Sri Lanka and always wanted to make movies and now he tells me that he actually might get to work on "Spiderman 2" and I was really happy for him and proud of him since he went after his dreams and made it happen. However, watching "Coyote Ugly" and the conditions under which Violet, the protagonist in the movie, lives under, I was thinking that maybe Meraash had to live the same way and that I could never do that. That also made me realize that I could never go after my dreams the way that Meraash and Violet did – that I would always hold back either because I was too afraid, too lazy or just didn’t have a goal that I wanted to reach that bad … makes me (or rather, my life) feel so pointless all of a sudden. I’m doing what I love – I love coding and I am in computers, I love movies and do watch a lot, I love writing and do write all over the place, I enjoy music and do listen to music from time to time … but where is the big dream? The big ambition? I guess the only thing that would qualify in that category was me wanting to be a successful writer. But would I drop everything, risk failure and a life of doing part-time jobs while looking for my big break? I don’t think so. So maybe I don’t have the vision or the commitment. I don’t know …

The other thing that struck me is totally unrelated but also something I’ve been thinking for a while now – do television and movie writers write women the way they perceive them to be or are these really women as they are? The reason I wonder is more so because of a couple of my favourite TV shows than because of how women are portrayed in "Coyote Ugly" though there were a few instances even in the movie which made me wonder. The two shows I’m talking about are "Gilmore Girls" and "Nikki" – I liked both the shows and the characters in them when I originally started watching them but recently (these might not coincide with the US episodes since we get them really late – just a note :p) some of the characters have been getting on my nerves because of the way they behave and since all the characters are women, I was wondering if this is just some man’s interpretation of how a woman would behave or if this was actually written by a woman and if it’s the latter, then why are so many women being portrayed as being so bitchy all of a sudden? Yes, I know, it’s just TV shows and none of these people are real but their actions still bug me … yeah, maybe I’m weird :p

Take Lorelei Gilmore for instance – she dumps her fiance the day before she is to be married, gives the guy no explanation and takes off for parts unknown. Then she keeps on leading this other guy who obviously has feeling for her on – yes, the guy could simply tell her how he feels but just as obviously, she should be able to tell that he feels something for her out of the ordinary since he behaves completely differently with her than he normally does. Then there’s her daughter who does not seem to realize what she’s doing or her own mind since she’s got a boyfriend but also is dallying with this other guy, while claiming that it is "just a friendship" whereas some of her actions seem to indicate that it is not. Or take Nikki from "Nikki" who dumps her husband who can’t dance and gets another partner just to win a dance competition and then thinks she can make it all better by being all sweet and lovey dovey and her husband who actually falls for it. Ok, I’ll stop now :p I know all this is just make believe but the actions of each of these characters bothers me and it bothers me even more as to who conceived these particular actions and if they really think that this is how women normally behave and I do wonder if this is *actually* how a majority of women feel/act …

Movies and more movies …

I spent the weekend watching an eclectic selection of movies – both old and so brand spanking new that I don’t think they’ve even hit the theaters yet :p I started the movie marathon off with a really old movie – a Steven Segal movie called “Hard to Kill”. Personally, I though it looked dated and that most of the acting was terrible and the action was only passable but it was watchable enough to be not a total waste of time :p I then went out on a DVD buying spree with my brother since I had a couple of DVD’s which weren’t working properly and so I actually needed to go return them and in the process I ended up with a few more DVD’s though fortunately it wasn’t as bad as the last time when I came home with 25 DVD’s <vbg>

Anyway, one of the DVD’s I wanted to exchange was “The Gangs of New York” since the disc wasn’t being recognized by my player. The new copy worked and that’s the first thing I watched. It was an OK film again but the characters just failed to capture my imagination or make me really interested in them. I could sort of empathize with Leo De Caprio’s character and see what Daniel Day Lewis’ “butcher” was about through all his racial bigotry but overall, the story just failed to hold me. While Martin Scorsese does succeed in showing these characters as not being black or white but in all their grimy shades of grey <g>, I just could not identify with any of the characters to feel much for the movie – probably it’s just me …

I then watched “DareDevil” – yes, the same “DareDevil” starring Matt Damon and Jennifer Garner which probably has not hit the theaters yet :p It was a really bad camera-copy but I wanted to see if it was worth watching since the trailers had looked promising. I usually make it a point not to see live-action movies starring any of my favorite comic-book characters since it almost inevitably spoils the magic for me – I have not seen any of the Superman movies and only one Batman movie (and even that was because they were playing it on the plane and there was nothing to watch :p) and certainly not any of the recent Marvel movies. But somehow, “DareDevil” was different. I have not read too many of the “DareDevil” comics since I never could lay my hands on them as a child – so I knew of DD only as a guest-star in the comics of other characters like Captain America. So, for whatever reason, I thought I’d watch the movie and while I don’t like some of the changes they’ve made in the movie (I’m a purist – give me the comic-book version, however implausible it may be – no biological webshooters for me thank you <vbg>), the jury is out on the final verdict still :p Again, there wasn’t enough meat to most of the characters for you to invest emotionally in them. I do like Jennier Garner though from her excellent TV series “Alias” and so loved her appearance as Elektra but even there, there were elements to the storyline that I just didn’t like. Just can’t comment on the action or the special effects since this was a camera copy and so I guess I’ll have to see the movie again in the finished form before I decide one way or another …

I can talk about the other movies that I watched “Shanghai Knights” with Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson, the sequel to “Shanghai Noon” – pretty funny and watchable; or the much talked about musical “Chicago” with Renee Zelweger – good music and watchable but I still haven’t seen the full movie; and go into long discussions about each, but instead, I’d like to take the time to briefly mention some movies worth watching which are coming up – mostly so that I’d remember to see them when they are released :p First, there is Ang Lee’s Marvel movie “The Hulk” – not sure I want to see this … and the CGI looks pretty bad on the trailers BTW … but it’s Ang Lee after all and so I probably will end up watching it. Was that Kris Kristofferson playing Bruce Banner’s dad? If so, he might end up in the unusual position of playing father figure to two of Marvel’s heroes – the Hulk and Blade :p Then there is “Basic” starring Samuel L. Jackson and Travolta – I’d just pay to see the movie just for the two actors but it looks to be an interesting thriller. Another movie with powerhouse talents is “The Hunted” with Tommy Lee Jones and Benecio Del Toro – I’m not missing that … or “The Recruit” with Al Pacino and Colin Farrel or for that matter, Farrel’s “Phone Booth”. Then there is Bruce Willis’ (why is Willis doing so many military movies recently – or for that matter, why do we have so many military movies generally recently – sign of the times?) “Tears of the Sun”. I usually stay away from military movies (unless it’s military courtroom drama or something) since I am just so tired of seeing people kill each other and people killing each other on a mass-scale is worse … but this again looks to be an interesting movie … plus I like Bruce Willis 🙂

Of course, there are the usual bunch of sequels that don’t even need to be mentioned – the two “Matrix” movies (I wouldn’t even dream of missing those two and will probably get the DVD as soon as it is out :p), “Legally Blonde 2”, “Bad Boys 2”, “2 Fast 2 Furious” and “The Return of the King” and I’m probably forgetting some others. I probably could go on and on and on with all the movies that look interesting and so I will stop for now … Oh, except for one last movie “Cradle 2 the Grave” with Jet Li and DMX :p I’ve loved Jet Li movies since “Romeo Must Die” but have yet to find a movie equal to that in where I liked the storyline. All of Jet Li’s later movies have failed to capture me as far as the characters and the storyline goes. I’m hoping that “Cradle 2 the Grave” will actually prove to be the exception and that it will turn out to be a great movie. I haven’t checked on this yet but it looks to me as if it could be another movie by “Romeo Must Die” director Andrezj Bartkowiak – I hope it is and I hope that it has as good a script …

The magic of movies …

It’s been a while since I made an entry here but once again, not due to a lack of material to write about but mostly due to a lack of time to do so. Since I try to write about my development work every day in the morning before I set out for work, I find that I’ve usually run out of time by the time I get done with that and need to rush to work. I usually vow to write once I’m at work and have a spare moment but that spare moment never seems to come by since I get pulled into one thing or another and am on the go constantly till I leave work in the evening. But enough of that and on to what I wanted to talk about …

I’ve been watching quite a few movies over the weekends and while I’ve been catching up on some of the movies from last summer that I missed, last weekend I decided to go on a trip down memory lane and watch some of the older movies in my collection that I had not seen due to some reason or other. So it came to be that quite by accident (or maybe not) that I went through a blood-and-gore fest to rival any butcher’s shop on the corner – but I forget that they don’t have those anymore :p I watched "Fair Game" with William Baldwin and Cindy Crawford, "Get Carter" with Sylsvester Stallone and Michael Caine, "L.A. Confidential" with Kevin Spacey, Russel Crowe and Guy Pierce and to top off the trip down memory lane, re-watched "The Big Hit" with Mark Wahlberg and Lou Diamond Phillips … and all this over just two days mind you, though my usual quota is more like four or five movies a day :p

Of what I watched, "Fair Game" was basic fluff – fun, exciting but nothing substantial to it. "Get Carter" was more solid and I really liked Sly’s acting in it but it was a bit predictable – maybe because I knew Michael Caine had played Sly’s role originally and so the story had to turn the way it did at the end … I will say no more in case there are people out there who still have not seen it and want to <g> "L.A. Confidential" was great in that the characters were all *real* in the sense that they weren’t *heroes* who took the moral high ground but rather ordinary people acting as people normally do – lots of shades of grey. It did take me aback quite a few times to see a character do something totally against what I’d want him to do but I could understand it as being human rather than heroic. However, the plot twists were a bit predictable again but I was struck by the fact that all the main leads were mostly unknown (at least to me) at the time the movie originally came out. I think I first noticed Guy Pierce when "Memento" came out and Russel Crowe when "Gladiator" was released .. I’ve no idea when I first noticed Spacey – maybe "The Negotiator" but I certainly did not remember him from "The Usual Suspects" but that was because I wasn’t watching the names of actors then :p

I’d already seen "The Big Hit" – on the big screen at that – but I wanted to watch that again since it seemed to fit right in with the other movies that I’d been watching. When I first watched it, it had been a Friday evening and I’d been stressed from work and I found the movie to be darkly humorous and laughed a lot but I didn’t find it to be that funny this time – I still smiled at a few things, had a chuckle or two and still enjoyed the action sequences but what struck me most was how pathetic Mark Wahlberg’s characters was – how he was being used by everybody that he thought of as friends or lovers (but then again his job and the fact that he has a fiancee and a girl friend on the side is out of character with his whole I-don’t-want-anybody-to-hate-me attitude) and kept on telling him "you idiot! wake up and smell the roses!" :p I guess if you can get that immersed in a movie, it’s still a good movie :p Anyway, I was again struck by the fact that "The Big Hit" had a major Indian/Hong Kong feel to it but that probably isn’t surprising since I believe the director Che-Kirk Wong comes from Hong Kong and this was his first Hollywood movie 🙂

Somebody’s comedy is someone else’s tragedy …

I actually was going to write about something else today but then I got this strange tag saying that HostAurora was gone. Not that I see any point in commenting about that since I have no idea who left the tag (they didn’t leave a name) but I guess there must have been some point to that little exercise :p Anyway, on to what I really wanted to talk about today … (actually, I’ve wanted to write about quite a few things but just haven’t had the time to write lately … but that’s another story altogether :p)
I watched "The Sweetest Thing" last night – actually, I’d started watching it last week but finished watching it yesterday. Can’t say that I was too impressed. It had funny bits but for a romantic comedy it was strangely unsatisfying. Don’t get me wrong – it was definitely breaking new ground as a movie since this seemed to really portray things from a woman’s perspective and to tread in many areas most movies wouldn’t even dare to tread :p But overall, it left me unsatisfied. It was realistic but I think realism is hugely overrated. I watched "Serendipity" last week and was entranced – now that is my kind of romantic comedy. If you contrast "Serendipity" and "The Sweetest Thing" you see that "Serendipity" is totally unrealistic as to it’s situations whereas "The Sweetest Thing" actually portrays possible situations and interactions between people in a normal manner but it just left me so, so … unfulfilled :p I guess I just want the dreamy, romantic, unrealistic stuff to escape from the boring, monotony of a humdrum existence :p

To me, there was no romance, no real feeling, behind the relationship between Cameron Diaz’s character and the guy she falls in love with – Pete. The whole love story seemed to be just an incident in a movie filled with incidents – there just seemed to be no meat to it … no passion .. no drama … or maybe it’s just me :p A friend of mine (a girl <g>) called "The Sweetest Thing" a chick-flick :p Now I love chick-flicks but this to me wasn’t even a "real" chick-flick. Yes, it probably is a chick-flick for the girl of today – of the nineties and the … what the heck do you call this decade? the naughties? :p But it isn’t the kind of chick-flick that I like .. so there :p

What is love part deux :p

Hmm … looks as if the timing of yesterday’s post was kind of unfortunate – though I had planned to write that since the day before and it was basically meant to be about what *I* thought about love and what *I* thought it had to be. There are no rules of conduct in this world – each one of us does as our conscience (or whimsy) dictates. As somebody pointed out to me in the GrooupHug mailing list when I said something to the effect "that I always have tried to do what I thought was right", that I would do what *I* think is *right*. Of course, that is basically what I said but I think the other person meant that what I think is right might not be thought of as right by others. I see his point in certain instances but I also know that there are specific things which are thought to be right by everybody in general. Anyway, I digress – as usual :p
Something I had had in mind to mention when I started the whole "What is love" entry was Haddaway and the significance/memories that the song has for me.

Unfortunately, I got caught up in the entry itself and it got a bit emotional for me to actually think about the lighter side of the entry : So here goes the rest of it today … I know that it wasn’t that memorable a movie and that some people said at the time it was released that it should have remained an SNL skit and never made into a movie at all but I still remember that particular scene and the song though I don’t remember much else about the movie at all :p Of course, there are other songs like that that I associate with a movies – for instance there is Gloria Gaynor’s "I will survive" which will always remind me of Keanu and his team of "scabs" mincing around on the football field :p There are other songs like that that I associate with either a movie or a certain situation or moment in my life but I can’t recall all of them or write about all of them here – I’m too busy listening to "What is love?" :p

To me Haddaway’s song will always bring up visions of Will Ferrell and Chris Katan doing there manic dance in front of the bar in "Night at the Roxbury" :p

Movies about children …

I watched "Legend of the Red Dragon" with Jet Li in it. Lots of martial arts action, cute kids playing at Shaolin fighting and some pretty funny moments thrown in for good measure. One thing that sticks in my mind is the mother of the female protagonist (Jet Li’s character’s love interest) saying "If you’re going to court my daughter, you need to have money!" and Jet Li says "I respect her, isn’t that enough?" and she responds "Not in this day and age!" :p I might be being very cynical but while that was supposed to be ancient China, I don’t think that has really changed at all at any time or in any place in the world – not really. A lot of people seem to put money before love and happiness. Maybe they are realists and I’m just an idealist but I can’t but feel that love and happiness should come first. Oh well …
All the movies today seem to be about kids :p I also watched a Tamil movie about a guy who adopts a child after he loses his own wife and child and about their relationship. The child’s father comes in to the picture later on and wants the child back but the child considers the guy to be his father and doesn’t want to go to his real father. While it was drenched in emotion, I still loved the movie and the fact that a person can love somebody else’s child as their own. Some people seem to think this is impossible but I don’t – I think you should love any child irregardless of whether they are your own or not. Children are perhaps the best part of humanity and it’s sad that children are not treated that way instead of being subjected to the whims and fancies of adults – who really aren’t adult at all in some cases.