You are currently browsing the monthly archive for January, 2007.
The inevitabilities of the day
the ends of destiny
the fragility of fate
small circles of history.
The catharisis of change
and the shallowness of hope
the shards of the past
that cut every vein
I bleed.
Unfortunately, I havent seen every movie on the Oscar ballot. So a slightly biased call based on expectations and extrapolations.
Best Movie: Little Miss Sunshine
Best Actor: _______________
Best Actress: Helen Mirren (The Queen)
Best actor in a supporting role : Mark Wahlberg (The Departed)
Best director: Clint Eastwood (Letters from Iwo Jima)
Best adapted screen play : Paul Haggis, Iris Yamashita (Letters from Iwo Jima)
Best writing screen play: Children of Men
Best Cinematography : The Prestige
Best Achievement in editing: United 93
Best Achievement in Makeup: Apocalypto
best Animated feature: Cars
Best Visual effects: Pirates of the Carribean: Dead man’s chest
The winds from the seas of Oscar are blowing across. I love user powered content and I guess for movies IMDB rocks! So I went by to take a look at user ratings in IMDB on the best and worst movies of 2006.
Borat is a obvious contender for both awards! One of the most scandalous movies to hit big screen in recent times, Borat takes South park to a whole new level! Neverthless, a must watch by my standards!
Anyways, the whole list is a bundle of contradictions put together.
Today, India was a Republic 57 years ago. Just thinking about it gave me goosebumps. A flurry of imagined potraits of how the moment must have manifested flooded my mind. Just to think what a moment it must have been! On the other hand, I wondered how many people actually must have got to experience that singular moment. Would the farmer in some deep corner of a village actually realize the magnitude of what was happening? Its quite strange isnt it? A moment in history whisked past so many people in a rather unassuming, modest fashion. That’s history for you. Fragmented pieces of the past that are put together in a manner that reflects the thoughts of the narrator.
and grace walked past
with shimmering eyes and a blossoming smile
Destiny stooped to raise my brow
for one moment, that drifted by
Behind the shelter in the middle of a roundabout
The pretty nurse is selling poppies from a tray
And though she feels as if she’s in a play
She is anyway
- Penny lane by the Beatles
Its a surprise to note deep philosophical thought in a Beatles song! Funny I was pointed in that direction by a class I am taking.
After a really long time, I got to watch a movie that I was very curious about. The movie had all the offerings of a dark depressing world best experienced over a few shots of vodka and a half finished glass of Jack Daniels. I really liked the bleakness that Brave New world by Aldous Huxely had to offer and so Children of Men was a movie I looked forward to with great eagerness.
What is the movie about? For the uninitiated, the movie narrates the story of world that is plunged into the throes of infertility. The steep decline in human population, the rise in depression, xenophobic governments, devastation and instability lend a dark and gloomy picture of the world in the year 2027. In the midst of all this, a woman is found pregnant and is soon expecting her child to be born. A miracle at these times. The story is about how she is taken over to a secret and almost mythical organization called ‘the Human Project’ that consists of scientists hoping to cure the world of its fertility related woes. The movie borders on the novel by P.D. James that goes by the same name.
I really liked the style in which the movie was made. Its very interesting that there aren’t any elaborate settings to create suspense or to keep you at the edge of your seat. For instance, when the protagonist, Clive Owen is escaping from the clutches of a terrorist organization, the car he steals refuses to budge. The thrill of watching this sequence lies in how slowly and painfully the car begins to move while he is being chased.
The moment of the birth of the child, to the moment at which everyone witnesses the baby in silence as it cries, some parts of the movie are absolutely surreal to watch.
And as much as I shower praise, the acting was pretty mediocre and there were some glitches in the way the sequence of events were framed, but otherwise it was a story, well told.
The future is a day away. How much does it take for a world to change?
I dont understand the Indian judicial system, not because its laws are complicated but because it has the tendency to go insane at times! Navjot Singh Sidhu’s case has been on trial (at least in principle) for long enough. How long are we talking here? 1988- 2007. Its about the time from when I first started going to school. Innocent or guilty its sheer stupidity for a judicial system to sleep over a case for this long. It all finally ended when Sidhu was convicted and everyone went about handing excessive praise to the way the judiciary has transformed and isn’t afraid of convicting the so- called ‘men of power’. I think most spoke too soon. All it took was an appeal to the Supreme court (link). It almost seems like cricket, where the umpires on the field are inclined to say that the batsman is out, the third umpire intervenes unnecessarily from his stand. The irony is unmistakable. Aaaargh! What a horrible way to start my day!
To dwell in atheism is to be looked upon in disgust by some, smirked by others, thought of as a fashion statement by many, and shunned by a few. I find that belief is something that has been hardwired into me over many years of my childhood. Even while I try to shirk away the concept of belief, I find the task to be one that has taken several hours of contemplation. I dont understand why people are unable to treat the concept of atheism as another means of looking at the world? Why should one point of view be better than another especially in a situation where no one knows what ‘a perfect life’ or a ‘perfect world’ really means! That said, I have always found it hard to understand why scientisits buy into the concept of religion very easily. I think the point where I made it over a huge barrier in my internal conflict between religion and the lack of it was when i got intitiated into the scientific method of thought. I found ‘God’ to be a very simplisitc explanation to all phenomena that cannot be understood. I hate the blame game!
Time seems to have catalogued a conversation between Richard Dawkins and Francis Collins. (God vs. Science, Time, 2006) Dawkins could be thought of as famous or infamous depending on whom you ask. Collins consistently keeps insisting on the validity of science to blend with religion and belief. I find his arguments very arbitrary. All of his arguments stem from his primary assumption of the existence of God and then going on to apply the scientific method for everything else that ‘He’ has created (note: He- what a sexist god this one is!) Why invoke God so soon Dr. Collins? Science is more exciting in the last century than it could have ever been before. Many questions now have answers. I have great hope in the science and its promises. Hope is perhaps a futile indulgence but I’d rather resort to hope than belief. At least the world does not look as dark with one eye!
The question of the self is perhaps the most profound and natural question that we can ask ourselves. Thankfully it isnt a question that has a straightforward answer. Why am I thankful for this obscenity in ignorance? Well, it provides an ample appetite for discussion and thought on one of the most fascinating questions that the mind can contemplate.
Steven Pinker has a very interesting article over at Time. (link)
Prof. Pinker makes for a very good science writer and he very elegantly highlights the points of fundamental importance. Neuroscience is broadly plagued with trying to understand two problems and in a manner of rather extreme uninnovativeness, seen mostly in physicists, is called the easy problem and the hard problem. The easy problem deals with trying to weed out the neural circuitry concerned with concious thought versus unconcious thought. Unconcious thought refers to those that direct the functions of the heart and such, stuff that is best not left under our arbitrary control.
The Hard problem, at least at the moment, appears to be a more philosophical question but has some interesting ramnifications from the view point of neuroscience.It deals with the question of subjective experience- the question of perception. Is perception different for each of us? The standard example to understand the nature of the question is to think of colour, which Pinker discusses. Is the red that i see and the one that you see, the same? Though we both might agree on the general nature of its redness, do we percieve different degrees of redness?
Michaelangelo is credited with saying, “A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.” I think that says a lot about our perceptions and abilities.
