Four Movies and a Book

A major achievement this weekend was the set up of my home theatre system successfully. Now I dislike my house a little lesser.

And I celebrated this achievement by watching four movies (almost) and not counting the ones which I watched partly on television, like Veer Zaara and Speed (in Hindi). Two of the four happened to be (u'll never guess it) Tamil! I think that equals what I've watched the entire year, the others being Chandramukhi and Thirupatchi. These two were called Autograph and Kanda Naal Mudhal (am sorry if I spelt it wrongly). Now Autograph was quite impressive, would have been more so, if it had been about half an hour shorter. It started out as a quaint little story but became pretty filmi towards the end. Well begun but...Mom and aunt said the movie got a national award for best direction?

Mala Chitthi had brought some more VCDs with her, one of which was Monsoon Wedding. I watched it again and was in awe again with N Shah's acting range. He pulls off every emotion in the movie so effortlessly. Wanted to ask Mira Nair why she put in those Delhi traffic scenes after every few scenes. Lent a very nice touch but am sure there is a more technical reason?Kanda Naal Mudhal- I watched this movie only because my first cousin Praveen Bharadwaj is acting in this movie. He is Solomon in this movie, if you happen to watch it. He is present in only 2 scenes and has maybe 4 dialogues, but he looked handsomer than both the lead actors. Hey Praveen, wishing you all the best!! As for the movie, was pretty harmless, so I guess that’s enough recommendation to see it if you know Tamil.

Bought Garam Masala and was not motivated enough to watch Disc 2. Maybe will finish it tonight. I have decided that from now onwards will buy only those VCDs which I have seen already. Garam Masala doesnt deserve to be in my collection, at least not Disc 1.

But the best part of the weekend was a charming little gem of a book called 'Roads to Mussoorie' by Ruskin Bond. It almost reads like pages out of a blog which is impossible because Bond says he doesn’t use the computer. But he talks of breakfasts, trips to Delhi and back, and trees outside his window (my favorite chapter) in a way that I will never be able to on this blog.

This is of course as obvious as saying that I will never be able to bat like Sachin Tendulkar.