Jersey Girls and Spammer Jerks

I watched "Jersey Girl" on Saturday with Laurie and I must say I loved it 🙂 I’ve seen other Kevin Smith movies like "Chasing Amy", "Dogma" and "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" and while they all had certain thought-provoking aspects, they never appealed to me emotionally the way "Jersey Girl" did. I don’t know if Keving Smith is growing as a writer and a director of if he is simply becoming one more "Hollywood" writer/director but what I can say is that I liked this one better than most of his previous works. It still had little touches which make it a non-run-of-the-mill movie – such as Gertie doing "Sweeny Todd" for the school (complete with slitting of throats and all :p) and Liv Tyler’s character which was so over-the-top and yet kind of true to life. Most people would probably say that Kevin Smith has sold out because this wasn’t a gritty, realistic, thought provoking movie but instead actually has a happy ending :p But I say, I loved it!!

Spammers seem to be evoking very harsh reactions these days. I’ve heard many people call them jerks (the title was just to go along with Jersey Girls – I really don’t think they are any more of jerks than the rest of humanity … people are just people :p) and even had a couple of users of WPBlacklist write to me and say that they should rot in hell 🙂 I don’t particularly like spammers myself (notwithstanding me not thinking of them as jerks) and so I’ve been conducting my own one-man campaign to do what I can to stop people from being bugged by spam. I’ve been posting over at the WP support forums in response to every spam-related query and have even updated the WPBlacklist plugin in a frenzy of updates to make sure that it can do the best possible to combat spam comments. While I was doing all of this, I seemed to be safe from spam myself for the longest time except for a couple of comments every other day. That seems to have changed now :p Either somebody is determined to get me (no, I’m not paranoid :p) or the spammers have come up with a new set of scripts/tools which circumvent most of the spam deterrents that I’d already put in place. I’ve been getting a steady stream of spam comments since I woke up in the morning today – but the good news is that WPBlacklist has so far caught them all and deleted them instantly. So I sit here with a smug smile on my face saying "another spam comment gone" while the flood of spam continues to hammer at my site :p

The Miracles around us

Have you recently sat in the rain and looked up at the lightning playing across the sky? Or, sat on the grass on an early morning, feeling the freshness and the coolness of the grass under you and the warmth of the sun on your face while the birds sang and the fragrance of flowers wafted all around you? I don’t know about you, but I seem to be doing less and less of this kind of thing which actually makes us realize how good life is and all the little miracles that surround us … and this is not a good thing.

It started raining heavily in the morning today just as I got up. I washed, prayed and then sat on my couch for a little while, staring out the window at the rain falling down and the lightning streaking across the sky. I really wanted to go out and just sit in the rain and let it splash all over me like I used to do when I was a child. Why is it that as we get older, we get more and more conservative and so …. dull? :p Why is it that we start thinking about what other people will think/say, whether we’d get sick and so on, instead of just going out and doing something which is fun? I don’t know. But I do know that I didn’t go out and just romp around in the rain. But I did sit there and look at the rain and think about all these things 🙂

It was then that I had the thought that the rain falling outside, the sunshine on our face, all these things are little miracles of God. When something big happens, like a huge storm coming up (I was thinking of "The Day After Tomorrow" at this point but that’s a different discussion :p), we start thinking of God and sometimes even say that it’s an "act of God". But we always disregard the little miracles which are all around us, I guess because we’ve gotten so used to them and they have lost their miraculousness. This is probably why I love a child’s viewpoint of the world much better than I love an adult’s – because children have still not become so blasé about all the little wonders that are all around us and they still look out at the world with innocent eyes. But the truth of the matter is that there is beauty and wonder to be seen, enjoyed and marvelled at, all around us … if we’d just take the time from our daily grind to notice these things. So just take a minute off your day to smell the roses, to stare out your window at the greenery of the trees or how blue the sky is and realize that the world might not be as dreary as it sometimes might seem 🙂

The Warrior’ Path

I watched "The Last Samurai" yesterday. Or rather, I actually began watching it on Saturday but couldn’t finish it on Sunday since I had some other stuff to do and so finished watching it yesterday :p I loved the movie. I had not thought I would like it as much as I did when I started watching it but by the time the movie ended, I was loving it. There were moments in the movie which left me pondering about things and that always is a good thing for a movie. What struck me most about the film was the fact that we all have habits, customs or a way of life that we think is the "right" one. It is only when we come face-to-face with something totally alien do we realize that there are other ways than ours and while that might not be the suitable way for us, we must respect the ways of others if we are to ever live in peace on this Earth of ours.

One scene that struck me especially was towards the end when Algren (Tom Cruise) and Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe) charge the army of Omura (Masato Harada). While I by no means like violence and would rather find a solution through discussion, I was left with the feeling "this is as it should be, person to person, face to face" when I saw them charging the opposing army. And then … they get cut to pieces by the Gatling gun of Omura and fall in their tracks. I was thinking how low have we fallen, no longer will we even take the honourable way of fighting (if we must fight) by facing our enemy and taking the same risks as s/he does. Instead, we stay far away in safety and fire upon our enemy with weapons that kill without distinction – combatant or non-combatant … there is no difference. Worse yet, our commanders and leaders (the ones who actually order these wars/killings) sit even further away (perhaps even in a different country) safe from all the destruction that they order. I see no honour in such a way.

But then again, was is not about honour any longer, is it? No, wars are fought by the greedy, the opportunistic – people like Omura in "The Last Samurai". People who are only concerned with gaining power or wealth – not about something as transient as honour. Of course, on the other hand, one might say, "What honour is there in killing somebody else?" but that is not my point. My point is that if kill you must, then kill face-to-face, against an opponent who is armed the same as you and has as equal an opportunity of killing you as you them. Perhaps then we would have less wars … but then again, given humanity’s track record so far, that seems unlikely.

Peter Pan the boy-man

Watched "Peter Pan" yesterday with Laurie. Actually, we started on the movie the day before but stopped half-way since there were other things to watch on the telly :p Anyway, it has been a long time since I read the original book and I’d forgotten most parts and in the interim, the image that had stayed with me had mostly been the Disney version and not the original. Now that I’ve seen the movie, I actually saw the story in a new light – not sure if the original book had the same perspective or if the movie maker had given the story a new twist or if it’s just me …

Whatever the case may be, this time around I saw the tale of Peter Pan more as a parable or an allegory. Peter Pan seemed to symbolize all males – never wanting to grow up, always eager to have fun but not ready to have feelings, to be hurt. And Wendy seemed to epitomize womanhood, always wanting a man instead of a boy, somebody who would love her and not just be a playmate 🙂 One of my favourite lines from the movie was Peter saying "I taught you to fight and to fly. What more do you want?" And sometimes I find myself echoing his words, "what more indeed?"

I don’t know about everybody – whether all males never want to grow up and to be honest, I’m not really certain that what most of the world calls growing up is really growing up. It’s all in the perspective. Is becoming hard, mercenary, cynical and suspicious growing up? Some people seem to think so. Is being selfish and thinking of oneself before others growing up? Some people seem to think that too. If that is growing up, I’d rather retain the innocence of childhood. However, I believe that some of us are lucky enough to retain a part of ourselves from our childhood and yet be able to adapt to the so called adult world as well, while there are others who never grow up at all and then again, there are a lot of people who seem to completely grow up and forget all about their childhood. But even this, is all in the perspective of each person since "grown up" is such a subjective term :p

Interruptions and holidays …

You start blogging again in earnest hoping to post at least every other day and what happens? You have a long weekend which lasts for like five days, that’s what happens :p Honestly, Sri Lanka is probably the country with the most holidays in the world! This time, the holidays went on from Friday the 30th of April to the middle of this week – Wednesday to be exact. When I got back to work on Thursday of course, I was flooded with stuff to do after such a long break. What else is new? :p
Of course, I had been planning to do a lot of stuff over the holidays but as usually happens with the plans of mice and men, I never actually got around to doing most of it – especially my coding :p Did manage to catch a few of the movies which have been lying around waiting for me to watch them though. Actually, that was mostly due to the fact that we’d recently gotten a new stack of movies and wanted to get through the lot before I totally forgot about them 🙂 So what’d I watch? Actually, I forget most of them now though I do recall that there were a few Hindi movies in there. Did watch the Kevin Costner starrer "Open Range" but found it to be a bit tedious. The story was OK I guess but seemed to plod on a bit at times and Costner’s propensity to have wide panoramic shots at times gets to be a bit too much :p

I also watched Tarantino’s "Kill Bill Volume I" in anticipation of getting my hands on a good DVD copy of volume II soon. Now if you are the squeamish type and don’t like to see blood spurting out all over the place like a hundred fire hydrants that had their tops knocked off, then you really shouldn’t be watching this movie. I normally don’t like movies with a lot of violence but then again, that is usually when the story is dark and moody and the violence is somehow "real". Here, the violence is so over the top that it seems comical or cartoonish and I just enjoyed the show to its fullest 🙂 I loved the improbable fight scenes and the way over the top storyline and am looking forward to watching the second volume whenever a good DVD copy comes out – the movie is too good for me to go out and grab one of those crappy camera copies, thank you very much :p

Amare et sapere vix deo conceditur

I said it wasn’t going to be an entry about love yesterday but unfortunately, I can’t promise the same today :p You see, I watched a Hindi movie yesterday after a long time and as always, it gets me thinking of love, what it means, how I look at it, where I am as far as love concerned and so on and so forth. It’s inevitable with Hindi movies since almost always they are about love or have a touch of love somewhere in them :p But on to the movie itself – it was called "Chalthe Chalthe" and that means something like "on the way" or "during the journey". I loved the movie since it was in a way different from other Hindi films which concentrate on the love story for the entire movie. Here, the love story was the first half and then the problems the lovers face after they are married and the realities of love was the focus of the second part.

Hindi movies are famous for "borrowing" from Hollywood flicks and so I have this sneaking suspicion that this might be an adaptation/localization of a Hollywood movie but if so, I didn’t recognize the original. But I did love the love story – the protagonist falls in love with a girl on the first meeting and she seems to like him too but he loses her phone number and can’t contact her. He searches high and low and finally finds her after a week or so and by that time, she’s engaged to be married to a childhood friend – it’s an arranged marriage as is common in South Asia. Of course, the girl has been brought up in Greece and her family is in Greece (though the story starts in India since the girl has returned to India for something or other ..) and now she has to go back to Greece. The guy tries to tell her that he loves her but she says that they’ve known each other for such a short time and that he’ll forget her eventually and leaves.

The guy decides that he must follow her since otherwise he’d spend his whole life wondering what would have happened if he’d tried to stop her. He gets on the same plane as the girl and the flight gets rerouted somewhere due to bad weather in Athens – which is where they both are going. They spend time together while waiting for the flight to Athens and this was the bit I found interesting – the guy does several things (like jumping into a wishing well to retrieve a coin that the girl had thrown in) just because he realizes that she wants it and of course, as I might have mentioned before, to me that is what love means – doing what the person you love wants, even if that might not be what *you* want. In the end, he drives her to Athens since she is desperate to get home, even though he knows that doing so will only part her from him sooner. Of course, this being a Hindi movie, things end happily during the first half and while they do have fights and problems as a married couple, things do end happily at the end of the movie as well since they realize once again that they love each other very much and can’t live without each other 🙂

So what has all that got to do with me? I did enjoy the movie but it also simply revived my love for love – if that makes sense 🙂 I also realized that while I might be insane in a way to look for that kind of love in today’s world (or in any day’s world perhaps .. I don’t know .. I’ve lived only one life and even that not fully <g>), that the search itself is what counts – even if I never find that kind of love because like the protagonist saying that he’d always wonder about the "what if" if he didn’t go after the girl, I too would wonder about the possibilities if I didn’t go in search of love. At least, that’s the way I feel …

Matrices and mindsets

Sometimes I really wonder about how things turn out – I’d thought that I’d not get to see "Matrix Reloaded" for a while yet since the only way I’d see it would be as a pirated movie and that would probably be a bad camera copy. But guess what? Not only have I seen the movie within ten days of it’s release but I saw a copy that should be just as good as what’s shown at the theaters! But enough of the strange anomalies in life (or should I say the matrix? :p) and on to the movie itself … but don’t worry, I will try not to spoil it for anybody else who might not have seen it …

The first part of the movie was a bit of a disappointment to me – yes, it had all sorts of spectacular effects, more fights than before and so on but it seemed to drag a bit at points and to get a bit too philosophical at times. The philosophy in the first movie was a bit more subtle and didn’t get so wordy – or maybe this was just the mood I was in when I watched the movie (it was late at night and I was tired after a full day) and so I’ll probably have to judge based on a second viewing in a week or so – which I fully intend to do since I do need a second viewing to get all the finer points that I might have missed.

The philosophy? Oh there is a lot more philosophy believe you me – there is talk of causality, of freedom of choice, of the importance of hope and then there are the indirect references (like how the first movie set Neo up as a Christ figure with his death and resurrection and the promise that he will bring redemption/freedom to the people) to more eastern philosophies like reincarnation, the wheel of life etc. And of course, as always there are "explanations" of reality – they even do a bit where they explain unexplained phenomena :p Of course, the second viewing that I’ve promised myself might help me to get a better handle on all the different philosophy bits as well …

There was one scene where Neo gets attacked by hundreds and hundreds of agents that left me feeling a bit of deja vu (and you know that was a glitch in the matrix :p) because it looked so incredibly like a scene from Jet Li’s "The One" (and of course, Neo is *the one* :p) but be that as may be, the final portion of the movie fully justified it being the sequel in the matrix series since it had new revelations, surprises and conundrums. I am not too happy with the way they concluded the movie since unlike the first movie (which was self-contained) they left you with a slight cliff-hanger on this one and we’ve got to wait till November to find out what happens. I hate that! Ah well .. anyway, I did have some interesting thoughts on the movie and it’s connection to reality such as the fact what if we are really living in the matrix and the Wachowski brothers are simply making a movie about what they’ve come to realize as the "real" reality subconsciously? :p Of course, I’m sure somebody else has made this suggestion already but I was kind of interested in exploring the idea but time and space prevents me – time because I’ve got at least three more movies to watch today and space because this would become a very long entry if I tried to go into all the different ideas and suppositions I might come up with :p

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