tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30236862012-01-13T22:05:00.681-08:00Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.comBlogger401100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1145371575425393192006-04-18T07:45:00.000-07:002006-04-18T07:48:05.040-07:00

I am now posting at ratheesh.livejournal.com.

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1142089809182880552006-03-11T06:43:00.000-08:002006-07-17T23:54:41.003-07:00

Today I watched the Iranian film Children of Heaven directed by Majid Majidi. The film is the story of two children, Ali and Zahra, from a poor Iranian family. In the beginning of the film, we see Ali getting his sister's shoes repaired from a cobbler. He goes to a vegetable shop after that, and keeps the shoe-bag in a corner of the shop. A man collecting garbage takes the bag away mistaking it

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1142001873963799052006-03-10T06:43:00.002-08:002006-03-29T19:46:00.206-08:00

Today we had an official team lunch at Gateway hotel, followed by a film, the Oscar-winning Crash, at PVR Cinemas.Crash has multiple threads in its story, all being incidents happening in Los Angeles in a day's time. A middle-aged shop owner of Iraqi origin, is always paranoid that others are insulting and cheating him. In the beginning of the story, we see him purchasing a gun to protect himself

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1141745211527402812006-03-07T07:25:00.000-08:002006-03-07T07:26:51.540-08:00

Watched Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo (1982) today. It has Klaus Kinski playing in the lead role.Fitzcarraldo has lots of similarities with Aguirre - The Wrath of God (1972), an earlier film from Herzog and Kinski. Kinski plays the role of Fitzcarraldo, a queer personality, who is obsessed with opera, and wants to build an opera house in the dense jungles of Amazon. He doesn’t get the necessary

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1140085431618371242006-02-16T02:22:00.000-08:002006-02-16T11:34:11.120-08:00

I watched the new Hindi film Rang De Basanti yesterday. This film is directed by Rakyesh Mehra.Sue (Alice Patten) is a film student from Britain who wants to make a documentary film on Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar Azad and other Indian revolutionary freedom fighters, inspired by an old diary of her grandfather who had been an officer in the British Army. She comes to India to make the film, and

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1139929272786137982006-02-14T06:59:00.000-08:002006-02-14T07:01:12.796-08:00

Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha is one of my favorite books. I have Steppenwolf and Narcissus und Goldmund with me, but somehow I couldn’t read them yet. Recently I read stories from the book The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse, translated by Jack Zipes. If the author of Siddhartha has written fairy tales, then definitely they wont be ordinary ones. There are 22 stories in this collection - Many of them

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1138971861154946122006-02-03T05:02:00.000-08:002006-02-06T22:25:23.460-08:00

Yesterday I watched the Tamil film Kanaa Kanden starring Srikanth, Prithviraj and Gopika. Prithviraj, in his first Tamil film, plays the role of the villain named Madan, whose only aim in life is to make money. He is a moneylender-cum-deal-settler, and uses forgery and modern techniques efficiently to make money. Srikanth plays the role of a PhD scholar named Bhaskar, who invents a method to

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1138464108159614192006-01-28T07:59:00.000-08:002006-01-28T18:52:23.183-08:00

Watched King Kong today at Inox theatre inside the Garuda Mall. I liked Inox theatre, and watching the amazing special effects of King Kong at Inox was a very good experience. I liked the scenes of the ship approaching Skull Island, The crew making a narrow escape from the group of dinosaurs and the monster insects, The fight between King Kong and the dinosaurs, and the climax scenes. Of course,

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1137940090993771692006-01-22T06:23:00.000-08:002006-01-22T06:38:43.676-08:00

After yesterday's Stop Violence, today I watched another Sathya-inspired Malayalam film on Surya TV - TK Rajeev Kumar's Ivar (2003). This film is also the story of two goonda gangs in Kochi. Pambu Jose (Biju Menon) leads one gang, and in the beginning of the film we see Raghav Menon (Jayaram), an IPS officer, joining the gang of Pambu Jose as part of some secret "anti-goonda" mission. Raghav

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1137864292203560742006-01-21T09:21:00.000-08:002006-01-21T22:14:11.140-08:00

Watched the Malayalam film Stop Violence (2002) today on Kiran TV. This film is the directorial debut of scriptwriter AK Sajan. In this film, there is a scene in which a group of goondas in Kochi sitting in a room and watching Ram Gopal Varma’s landmark Hindi gangster film Satya on television. I don’t know whether the director wanted to remind us of Satya for some thanksgiving purpose. Anyways,

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1137751847248357912006-01-20T02:04:00.000-08:002006-01-20T02:10:47.260-08:00

I watched the Hindi film Apaharan directed Prakash Jha. The film shows the story of Bihar's "kidnapping industry" (!), and it is one of the umpteenth films that attempt to take a look at the social injustice, corruption in politics, etc. Ajay Devgan plays the lead role of an unemployed young man named Ajay. His father (Mohan Aghase) believes in being a good and responsible civilian, and he is not

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1137580316933263472006-01-18T02:27:00.000-08:002006-01-19T18:50:50.960-08:00

Yesterday I watched the popular Hindi film Salaam Namaste starring Preity Zinta and Saif Ali Khan. It was a forgettable film except for the climax scenes which created vomiting sensation (I guess the climax was intended to be comic).Preity Zinta and Saif Ali Khan in Salaam Namaste (Image from nowrunning dot com)When Aditya Chopra made Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge in 1995, he was actually starting

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1137172043871673602006-01-13T08:56:00.000-08:002006-01-13T09:15:09.113-08:00

Today I watched the Finnish film Man without a Past directed by Aki Kaurismäki. This film was the winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes 2002.The film tells the story of a middle-aged man, called M, who had come to Helsinki looking for a job, but gets beaten up by a set of robbers and looses his memory because of a head injury. He doesn't remember anything about his past - not even his name.

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1136914022186839892006-01-10T09:20:00.000-08:002006-10-30T05:17:09.200-08:00

I like reading detective fiction and watching detective films, however bad they are. The thrilling sensation of adventure and problem-solving - it somehow immediately pulls me into the story and keeps me engaged in. Sherlock Holmes stories, of course, have been my favorites in detective genre. Among Indian works, I like stories of Byomkesh Bakshi and Feluda, even though these stories are many a

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1136735927302689552006-01-08T07:55:00.000-08:002006-01-12T13:49:20.046-08:00

I read the book Fascinating Stories, a collection of 17 short stories by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, translated from Bengali by Ashoka Dev Choudhuri and published by Sahitya Akademi. The translator has written and talked about Bibhutibhushan widely, and this representative collection tries to "..bring to life the face of Bengal as it was at the beginning of the 20th century".The translator says

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1136652086055407642006-01-07T08:33:00.000-08:002006-05-05T19:06:10.333-07:00

Last weekend, I had purchased the VCD of the Malayalam film Boeing Boeing. Two days back, I watched this film, for the fourth or fifth time. Directed by remake-specialist Priyadarshan, this film is inspired from the 1965 English film with the same name (I haven’t seen this film), but obviously, there is no reference given to the original in the Malayalam film. I had enjoyed Boeing Boeing when I

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1136286526747675142006-01-03T03:04:00.000-08:002006-01-08T00:24:31.810-08:00

A Kerala village with green paddy fields, large ponds with shrubs around it, a river and a boatman. An empty country road covered with a layer of dry leaves. Yellow bamboo plants on both sides of the road. An old lady is walking through the road, carrying a large black umbrella, folded, in her hand. Probably there is a cloth bag in her other hand. She is wearing either a blouse and settu mundu,

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1135950433679401602005-12-30T05:39:00.000-08:002006-01-05T00:30:31.980-08:00

Yesterday I watched the Tamil film Thavamai Thavamirundhu, Cheran's directorial venture after the critically acclaimed and popular Autograph. The bulk of the story is shown through flashbacks, just like in Autograph. Mutthaiah (Raj Kiran) and his wife Sharada (Sharanya) live in a village with their two children. Mutthaiah owns a printing press, and works there. That is the only source of income

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1135680193099926872005-12-27T02:42:00.000-08:002006-07-21T04:56:18.676-07:00

In the Malayalam film Vellanakalute Nadu, there is a role of the brother of the character played by Shobhana, the heroine. He had only three or four scenes in the film, if I remember correctly. But I liked the way CI Paul, the actor, played this character. I had watched this film from Christ College auditorium, as part of some free film show. I still remember the scene where CI Paul bursts out at

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1135093437865613532005-12-20T07:42:00.000-08:002005-12-20T07:51:25.523-08:00

I read the short novel Parineeta today. This Bengali novel by Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay is translated by Malobika Chaudhuri and it was published by Penguin to coincide with Pradeep Sarkar's film based on the novel (The cover of the book says that it was a film by Vidhu Vinod Chopra, who was actually the producer and co-writer of screenplay of the film).Lolita is very young in the novel

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1134909298238713742005-12-18T04:25:00.000-08:002006-12-14T15:32:28.976-08:00

Watched the Malayalam film Thanmathra today at Sangeeth theatre. This is Blessy's directorial venture after Kazhcha, and tells the story of a middle-aged secretariat employee named Rameshan Nair, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. The story is inspired from Padmarajan's short story called Orma. Rameshan Nair (Brilliantly played by Mohanlal) lives in Thiruvananthapuram with his wife and

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1134818342309770182005-12-17T03:16:00.000-08:002005-12-17T05:50:35.590-08:00

Beauty and Sadness (1975) is the last novel written by Nobel Prize-winning Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata, and it was published after his death in 1972. The novel is translated from Japanese by Howard Hibbett.In the beginning of the novel, we see aging author Oki Toshio traveling to Kyoto by train. He wants to be there at Kyoto during the New Year's Eve to hear the living sound of the old

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1134739104579635422005-12-16T05:12:00.000-08:002005-12-16T22:10:57.763-08:00

I was looking at today's date, "December 16" and it looked vaguely familiar. Then I recalled that it has been 9 years since I entered my first job, which was in 1996. I was away for studies for an year and half in between, so in total it makes seven and half years in the software industry.It has indeed been quite long!! These years have made me rich, greedy, old, fat, cunning, selfish, cynic, and

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1134563700899482142005-12-14T04:32:00.000-08:002005-12-14T04:35:00.910-08:00

Today, in the Suprabhatham program in Asianet, they showed an interview with Santhosh George, maker of the Sancharam series of video travelogues. It was interesting to listen to his talks. He seemed to be simple, frank, and straight forward. When asked to compare the Malayalees with other people, with respect to cleanliness, he said that the Malayalees just bath twice a day, that’s all. As far as

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1134462765066178782005-12-13T00:31:00.000-08:002005-12-13T00:32:45.076-08:00

The article at http://www.musicindiaonline.com/n/i/malayalam/1430/ says that Shaji N Karun is making a film based on the life of Raja Ravi Varma. I think the life of the legendary artist was as colorful as his great paintings, and there could be many aspects in it which a director like Shaji can use to make a brilliant film. I remember, earlier there was some news about a film on Ravi Varma being

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1133888641482966472005-12-06T09:02:00.000-08:002005-12-07T20:15:49.703-08:00

Read my copy of Tintin in the Congo today. This Tintin book, the second one that Herge made, was first published in French in 1931 as Tintin au Congo, in black and white. This book was revised and published in 1946, in color. The book shows Tintin's adventures in Belgian Congo, and it has a foreword section, which says: "In his portrayal of the Belgian Congo, the young Herge reflects the colonial

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1133800131479478962005-12-05T08:26:00.000-08:002005-12-05T13:07:12.253-08:00

Read the Bengali novel Pratidwandi by Sunil Gangopadhyay, translated by Enakshi Chatterjee.I have read Malayalam translations of two novels by the author before - Swargam Thedunna Manushyar and Ajnjathan (I don’t know the original Bengali titles), and liked them. But the primary reason for reading Pratidwandi was that Satyajit Ray has made a film based on it, which I haven’t seen yet. Ray has

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1133711017836064092005-12-04T07:42:00.000-08:002005-12-06T02:32:19.866-08:00

Today I went for Strand book festival at Chinnaswamy stadium. They have a very good collection there, and I got the view of a cricket stadium for the first time in my life. It looked very small, compared to what it looked like in television.I spent a good amount in buying books. Few of the books I bought are the following:- Beauty and Sadness, a novel by Yasunari Kawabata.- A collection of fairy

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1133629788602641352005-12-03T09:08:00.000-08:002005-12-03T09:09:48.613-08:00

Today evening, Asianet showed the 1980 Malayalam film Kalika. Based on a horror novel by Mohanachandran (I remember reading few chapters of this novel in old issues of Kumkumam weekly when I was in school), this film is directed by Balachandra Menon, and surprisingly, he doesn’t act in this one!The story is about four people (played by four nice actors - Balan K Nair, Sukumaran, Venu Nagavally

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1133361165286013752005-11-30T06:28:00.000-08:002005-12-03T09:47:41.943-08:00

I read the book Brushing Up the Years: A Cartoonist's History of India 1947-2004. This book is a collection of RK Laxman's "Common Man" cartoons, taken from a period of six decades, from 1947 to 2004. The collection starts with portraits of Gandhi and Nehru. Then it goes through Nehru's governance, general elections, Indira Gandhi's "rule" over India and the Congress, tragedy of Janata

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1133199033429272962005-11-28T09:29:00.000-08:002005-11-28T09:41:18.726-08:00

I read the book In the Same Boat - Golden Tales from Bengal, a collection of twelve Bengali short stories written by various authors, translated by Gopa Majumdar. All the stories in this collection are narrated in a light-hearted way, with a gentle touch of humor in them, however grim their themes may be. The stories are translated nicely by Gopa Majumdar. I enjoyed reading this book.The first

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1133104708438503982005-11-27T07:17:00.000-08:002005-11-27T07:18:28.440-08:00

I watched the Spanish film Hable con ella (Talk to Her) today at CFD. The film, directed by Pedro Almodóvar, won the Oscar award for best original screenplay in 2003.Loneliness is the theme of the film. Two men, Benigno and Marco meet at a clinic. Both of them have their girlfriends admitted in the clinic, in coma state. Benigno is a childish-looking young man who spent most of his childhood and

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1133020283022932252005-11-26T07:46:00.000-08:002005-11-27T01:20:50.346-08:00

Watched Rajamanikyam, the latest Mammootty film, today at Sangeeth theatre.All Malayalam films starring Mammootty have been big commercial hits in the last 2-3 years. Even idiotic films like Thaskara Veeran were hits. Rajamanikyam, directed by newcomer Anwar Rashid, also has been declared as a hit and it also follows the pattern of Thommanum Makkalum and Thaskara Veeran. The hero-worshipping

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1132763167616629032005-11-23T08:24:00.000-08:002005-11-26T07:41:04.956-08:00

Ritwik Ghatak, the veteran filmmaker from Bengal, had written poems and short stories before he started directing films. He continued to write stories even after he entered film field. The book from Srishti publishers has a collection of 17 short stories by Ghatak, translated by Rani Ray. Unlike Satyajit Ray, story writing was not a "second love" for Ghatak, Sumanta Banerjee writes in the

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1132414287547728692005-11-19T07:29:00.000-08:002005-11-26T07:46:36.413-08:00

Today I watched Shonar Kella, Satyajit Ray's film based on his own story featuring the detective, Feluda. I have seen this film once before on television. This time I watched the DVD, and it was a better print with bright colors. However, the subtitles are arranged in a way that would really irritate a viewer who doesn’t know Bengali. At many places, subtitles are shown on the screen just for a

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1132288169010666972005-11-17T20:28:00.000-08:002005-11-17T20:35:25.113-08:00

Gol GumbazWe got up at 6AM on Sunday, and after taking bath, had a good breakfast from Kamat hotel again. At 8:30, we started towards Gol Gumbaz. We reached there within ten minutes, and a new tourist guide came towards us and introduced himself. He seemed to be very talkative, and very emotional about the monuments at Bijapur.Gol Gumbaz is the tomb of Mohammed Adil Shah, who ruled Bijapur during

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1132221837205012412005-11-17T02:02:00.000-08:002005-11-17T02:03:57.226-08:00

BanashankariWe got up early on Saturday (November 5), at 5AM, as we were asked to be ready by 6. Hot water was available in the hotel, so we quickly took bath and checked out from our room. However, it was nearly 7 by the time all the passengers got ready and the bus started. Then, we were stuck in a traffic jam for an hour on the way. The bus stopped at a place called Kushtagi for breakfast, at

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1132071460714724852005-11-15T08:16:00.000-08:002005-11-23T21:41:34.913-08:00

Watched the new Malayalam film Ananthabhadram today at Sangeeth theatre. This is the first Malayalam film of director Santhosh Shivan, and in an interview with him, he told that his intentions was to make a film "highlighting our rich culture and traditions", that will make us feel as if we were "going to a story that our grandparents told us when we were young". He doesn’t want to call it a

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1131982106456944342005-11-14T07:26:00.000-08:002007-02-01T03:45:35.570-08:00

Journey to HospetI didn’t have much expectations regarding the KSTDC tour package. I had earlier talked to one of my colleagues who had gone for a 1-day tour conducted by KSTDC to Shravanabelagola, Belur and Halebid. He had told me that the KSTDC people would take us to the places on their bus, and ask us to go and see around and come back to the bus within short time. That way, they squeeze more

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023686.post-1131706439739478932005-11-11T02:52:00.000-08:002005-12-02T11:35:17.110-08:00

This is my first post in blogspot.I have been on LJ (www.livejournal.com/users/ratheesh) since 2001, and am now wondering whether I should move to blogspot.

Ratheeshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04690009653011000400noreply@blogger.com2