Studio Ghibli - Seen

• Castle in the Sky (1986)
• My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
• Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)
• Pom Poko (1994)
• Princess Mononoke (1997)
• Spirited Away (2001)
• The Cat Returns (2002)
• Howl’s Moving Castle (2004)
• Ponyo (2008)
• The Secret World of Arrietty (2010)
• From Up on Poppy Hill (2011)
• The Wind Rises (July 2013)
• The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (Nov 2013)
• The Boy and the Heron (2023)
• Whisper of the Heart

Barbie

• Matriarchy and Patriarchy  
• I remember walking in a conference room, talking to my friend over a phone call and as I usually do, talking my thoughts out loud. I remember flipping the scenarios and accepting that it would be as disastrous in a Matriarchy. It would make women behave like men. They would treat men as stallions for work and pleasure (just as men treat women). It would again be a world that would not work out since no one likes to be treated like that. 
• I saw this depicted in Barbie-land, though it did not come close to the crassness with which men could be treated in the world I had imagined.  
• So I had concluded that a perfect world would require perfect equality and mutual respect for everyone. And that requires being a nice human first - as the movie calls out, it starts with knowing who one is without everything else in the picture. That is step number 1.
• Plight of women
• The day I decided to end things, that evening I had cried with such strong emotions trying to articulate how women are treated - how I was treated and how every other women I knew was treated. Most of the time women have no where to go because the do not know how to leave the only world they know. I had physically ached explaining how disgusting it was for men to treat women so poorly when no one deserves to be treated like that. Interestingly the cases I was thinking about back then where not even close to the cruelty with which men actually treat women. Somehow those simple instances were enough to make my blood boil - anymore than that would have invoked violence in me. It had played as a propellent for me to decide that evening. And his shocked face was pure gold - because I knew he could not comprehend a single word I said - as I had not in all these past years of my life. 
• It arrived as America Ferrera's monologue though yet again it was just barely touching the surface of phenomenon women actually experience in man's world. And even this much hit so hard because it was being delivered in a room full of women in the movie and the audience was shocked - I know this because I saw this movie two times and both times there was pin drop uncomfortable silence in the theater. In that moment, everyone was listening. 

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Barbie is an important movie of this age. 

Reflection

 

Ganashatru

So, probably one the Ray's movies that I could not watch. Do not recall why. I should have just checked YouTube.

Anyways given what is happening around us and how humans react to things, logical folks can seem to be overreacting or can be branded. Truth has to be presented in a format that can be consumed by the masses or not be presented at all. People and their opinions have to be aligned and worked upon. 

Kurosawa Update

Watched the following:

Kurosawa

Phase 2 of Kurosawa starts. I joined Criterion Collections so that I could watch the ones I could not do - back in 2008-2009 via Netflix (online and on CDs). On my list to begin with:
#straydog
#dersuuzala
#redbeard
#thedrunkenangel
#thebadsleepwell

High and Low was the last one I saw with all the essential ones like Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Ran, Yojimbo, Iriku, Kagemusha, Throne of Blood, The Hidden Fortress, Sanjuro, The Idiot and The Dreams.

Art does imitate life.

When the whole universe conspires to bring your life together and halt at a moment - idea, people, story, music, production & release - you should give some credit to the original script writer. I mean, how often can you catch someone's attention like this? One can do nothing but sit up and notice and marvel at the coincidences. How often do we see ourselves being played out on the theater screen?

Belief gets reinforced in those moments. So many of them.

26th July 2017

This song was released 2 years back and I spent the whole evening today with it. 

apertura

After a long time I am listening to The Motorcycle Diaries.this album and this movie had captured my imagination. I had bought the DVD back then and had a major crush on Gael Garcia Bernal. The beats and drums in Apertura is something. Every track in the album has this primal feel to it as if it knows the origin of music. It’s so simple and yet so profound. Only Chipi Chipi seems of this world. Every other track introduces me to South America first hand.

And it has brought me to a space which I can recognize as my space.

Paromitar Ek Din...

I had watched this movie Paromitar Ek Din, like ages ago. I may have forgotten the details of the movie but do recall that a non-conformist mother-in-law is a bit of a phenomenon for the newly wed daughter-in-law in the beginning and how only she is able to grasp the person behind the daunting personality.

It was beautifully portrayed though I do not have a heart to revisit it since it was pretty intense. I am in no such mood. 

Jordan

It's been ages since I have gushed like this about a performance or an album. Ranbir Kapoor just has my respect. He was so believable as Jordan that I wonder if he actually 'knew' the range of emotions he just portrayed. First of all, all of them were so complex and so different in shades that you had a whole rainbow of depression in at least four different photographic print toning. Yet he pulled each one of them beautifully and convincingly. If only he had a muse of equal match!

And then there was the music. Rocking and how. Each and every track, the whole album is worth your time. AR Rahman only could have produced a Hindi rock album worth listening to.

Delhi and Dobara - Peppered with Expletives !

Liked Delhi Belly - could have done wonders if only the expletives were not so liberally hashed into an otherwise wonderful script. But I can still say that I liked it enough. And liked the end scene of Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara - it beautifully captured what it was supposed to.

I love Abhay Deol and definitely like Farhan Akhtar.

Oh man! So I finally saw both the versions of Kill Bill completely. And I had not expected the story to be as it turned out to be. But then, it would not have made any sense any other way.

Only a lot of love can generate a lot of hate. Loving, Hating and Knowing.

Bill: "...and I over-reacted."

Kiddo: (Long perplexed pause) "You over-reacted! Is that your explanation???????"

Bill: I didn't say I was going to explain myself. I said I was going to tell you the truth. But if that's too cryptic, let's get literal. I'm a killer. A murdering bastard, you know that. And there are consequences to breaking the heart of a murdering bastard. You experienced some of them.

Milkshake

When they were walking along the Danube, they met this guy who asked money for a poem - a poem that will have a word of their choice.

And he impressed me the same way he impressed them. In fact more. I started to wonder what could be his story. A frail young man, with clothes hanging from his body, smoking a light as he pours his head in his book. He scribbled and as he looked up his face had that bliss - he could have been high but he looked perfectly at peace with himself. He was happy that he had pleased them and got his reward.

Jesse pointed out - how do you know? He may have had the poem and he plugged in the word of our choice. But the look on her face made him drop the subject all together. She did not think so.

I, like her, would like to believe otherwise. For then, he could not have been SO high.

Tangled was a good movie.