The hangover is about a bunch of four friends who visit Las Vegas for a bachelor party for one of their pals.
After gulping down their Jagermeisters, the men embark on a night of booze, women, gambling and all possible mayhem. But the problem is when they wake up the next morning, they do not remember a thing. Their entire suite is a mess, there is a tiger in their bathroom, a baby in the cupboard and the to be groom is nowhere to be found. How they piece the clues to what they exactly did last night and try to locate their missing friend forms the main part of the story.
The movie has low budget stars but they fit the bill extremely well. All of them perform competently and there is also a surprise appearance by Mike Tyson. The situations are extremely funny and some of them are just laugh out loud. A word of warning though, this is an adult comedy and lewd comments and imagery is very much a part of it.
A guy visits his friend’s house who is known to be a real prankster. As he slowly enters the house, he is about to step on what looks like a rug but immediately moves away and avoids slipping.
'How did you know?' asks his friend ‘Main tumhare “rug rug” se waakif hoon' was the instant reply
Although this happened more than three weeks ago, lazy me is posting this now. So yes I have finally done it and the photograph on the left is proof of that(incase you chaps and skeptical women had an iota of doubt). Ofcourse it could also be mistaken for a fancy dress competition but I was not in the mood to wear a black gown on a hot sultry day in the middle of Newark.
Although I had graduated in December itself, the college conducts its convocation just once a year so there we were, lined up to collect our degrees or fake ones (we had received the original ones in the mail about two months earlier). The event took place in the Prudential Center and it was good to see the happy faces of all students and parents. I remember, I last attended a graduation ceremony in high school. At that time we euphorically sang our school song while we held candles in our hand that fiercely burned as signs of our innermost desires, dreams and bright future ahead.
Nine years later, the candle continued to shine while certain other thoughts crossed many young minds. Was all this good riddance from all those long sleepless nights, that last minute rush to complete assignments, cursing the internet network when assignments had to be uploaded, the not so subtle requests to friends to do a part or major portion of the projects, smoking, drinking on the patio, having those futile discussions on arbitrary topics?.... Atleast for most of us all the aforementioned things had come to fruition. Suddenly it had dawned on me that I was never going to go back to college again not that I would go back to school if given a choice
So what now? Suddenly the wheels have stopped turning, the signal has turned red and the car of life slowly waits to join the rest of the highway traffic moving along in the monotonous patterns that the world and society has blueprinted for us. All the while that we were in college, we complained, whined and expressed discontent at every point about the screwed up educational system and how it would be better that all these boring academics came to an end and we got down to what was essentially important - earning money. But now that I find myself at the end of that academic road and grinding myself into that tedious cycle of job, eat, sleep, job, I feel those days in college weren't that bad as I had made out to be.
I find myself unable to bring or create the heady atmosphere again partly due to the fact that all my old friends have left(especially the two in the picture with whom I have spent the last three years) and/or are spread out to different parts of the country and world and partly due to the fact that it is always easier to swim with the tide than against it. Why bother when one thing is proven to work this way, why to put a spanner in the works? I don't know whether I ever will try to swim against the tide and risk drowning but what I yearn to do is to swim in style once again. Take pleasure in the smallest walks of life, get in touch with myself , get in touch with the God inside us. Because the pressures of life have made it difficult to escape. Negative thoughts have seamlessly found their way into my breath which like carbondioxide threaten to extinguish the candle which I tried so dearly to keep glowing.
I want to and I wish and I will keep the spark alive that defined our college life, the best days that have gone by, with not so much as the same immature, bordering on the childish behavior but by exploring some new avenues in friendships, relationships and misclleaneous pastimes. Let the candle continue to burn....
As if falling and graying hair weren’t clues enough, I get up today morning with a back and neck ache. Ouch ! it was painful and is still hurting as I write this entry. Ofcourse, there is no recession to blame for this but only my own stupid bed and perhaps China…..How? Just read on….
I have two beds at my place. One is a double bed kept specially for those eternally optimistic beliefs about meeting someone at the club or pub and one thing leads to another kind of fairy tales ;). Ok alright I am kidding. The truth of the matter is that two months ago I was living with two roomies who had to leave suddenly leaving this rotten piece of equipment behind. So when I moved I decided to bring this along. I also have my own bed but that is currently being used by my maata-shri. So now I sleep on this piece of junk whose springs have disintegrated like some trashy “Made in China” toy. Hey wait a minute , isn’t this bed made in China? Or for that matter everything from that battery in your mobile phone to the 50 inch of complex electronics hanging on your wall
China, a country that claims and is claimed by many to be the next super power by everyone and anyone who possesses a knowledge of current affairs even though those so called expert people might now even know their own neighbours. Just to give you a simple example….we bought a set of knives from Target stores obviously made with the Sino prowess. Unsurprisingly they were not too expensive but when it came to using them, they were so pathetic I might well have used my car keys to cut something. I doubt if they are even good enough to make an incision on my finger which ofcourse I didn’t try otherwise my mom would have woken up the neighborhood which incidentally does include a Chinese. Wonder if he would have proved his point then. And this is the case with most of the things they make, I guess durable and reliable does not feature in their manufacturing dictionary. Even the great democracy of India awoke to this bullshit and ousted the CPI.
Spring has finally arrived and I have taken upon myself to civilize a few Americans by teaching them the gentlemanly game of cricket.
The first two days as expected have been a complete disaster not in the least because of the wet weather but Americans consider anything given in their hand as weapons of mass destruction and continue to wield the cricket bat as one. They kept hitting in the air despite my Gandhian plea to stop this violence and keep the ball on the ground.
After miraculously missing the parked but trembling cars in the parking lot, Mr. Beefy(ex softball player) smacked a ball high up in the air which went and landed straight on the roof of the patrolling security guard's car. I thought that was it, game busted before it even started. A remorseless Mr. Beefy stood chewing an imaginary gum happy with his exploits and I hoped, ready to face the music. The guard got out of the car and walked purposefully towards us with a look of menace that only the great Viv Richards could afford to give to bowlers in his time. 'Give me the bat,' he said in a tone which left no scope for protest. I was already resigned to the fact that my bat was going to get confiscated just like it used to happen at school. Beefy promptly handed the bat over to the guard who walked with it towards our makeshift stumps. 'Who is the best bowler among you, give it your best shot,' he ordered 'Huh,' I said 'What's the matter kid, haven't got any balls?' he mocked 'Most certainly," I said as I jumped with elation
Turns out the security guard was Guyanese who informed us that the after his mother, the only love of his life was cricket. So there it was, I have put in motion some way to knock some sense in the American heads as to what is called a sport.
BANG!! Shit, as I write this, Mr. Security Guard has compromised the security by whacking the streetlight which has stopped functioning. Hope the fun continues, follow the post labels for more events.
The Shawshank Redemption (1994) *ing Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman Director : Frank Darabont
“They send you here for life, and that's exactly what they take….. the part that counts, anyway.”
This famous dialogue forms the basis of this prison drama showing the lives of convicts especially two of them Andy(Tim Robbins) and Red(Morgan Freeman).
Andy is a wealthy banker sentenced to the Shawshank jail for life on charges of murdering his wife and her lover. On arrival, he remains quiet and doesn’t interact much with other inmates. But one day while tarring the roof, thorugh a good deed he wins the friendship and respect of fellow prisoners. I won’t give away anything else as you have to see for yourself the different characters and their thoughts, motives and actions.
The movie is set in the 1940s and spans twenty years in the lives of the main characters. Since this movie is more character based, one feels that the story does veer off at certain points in the narrative but that is just part of the appeal. With long panned shots of the prison from top the director creates an atmospheric impact where the tall and massive walls and turrets of the penitentiary play their own part in creating a claustrophobic environment. The background music as with most Hollywood movies is captivating and draws and moves us into the lives of these men. The dialogues are some of the most quotable in Hollywood film history.
Coming to performances, Tim Robbins is excellent as the wrongly victimized banker. I don’t even know the other cast but all from the prison warden to the old “institutionalized” prisoner perform remarkably. And then there is the narrator in all this, Morgan Freeman who is simply mind blowing as Andy’s best friend and the man who is “known to locate a few things from time to time. ”
In 1994 this movie received a lukewarm response and also lost out to Forrest Gump in the Oscar race. However this movie is recommended for every DVD collection. It has become my all time favorite. Watch it because it is a poignant, poetic, aesthetic, and moving portrayal of human emotions like hope, survival and above all redemption. Don’t miss it. I’ll leave you with a couple of quotes.
“Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies” “Get busy living, or get busy dying.”
Casablanca(1942) *ing Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains Director : Michael Curtiz
Voted as the greatest American romance by AFI, I decided to watch this film only because I had never seen a Humphrey Bogart film before. And I am also not a big fan of movies made before the 1950s.
Casablanca is set ….well in Casablanca, a French Protectorate where people escaping from wartime Europe have to seek refuge before they can board the plane to America. The largest source of entertainment in town is Ric’s café, an establishment run by one Richard Blaine, a cynical lone wolf, played by Humphrey Bogart. Things just drift until one day, Ric’s old flame Ilsa(Ingrid Bergman) turns up at the café with a lover and things start to move from there.
There are two kinds of love stories, one which get cheesy and too mushy with dialogues and then there is Casablanca with just the right amount of emotion capturing the subtle nuances of romantic affection. Even its sub plots and other characters are so good that you really start feeling that you are living in this Moroccan coastal town.
This movie has some of the most razor sharp dialogues, I have ever heard along with the movie I am going to review next and ofcourse Guy Ritchie and Tarantino movies. Coming to performances, Humphrey Bogart really packs a punch ironically with a laidback style of dialogue delivery. Ingrid Bergman looks stunning and performs admirably. Out of the supporting cast, Claude Rains just stands tall over everyone else with a charismatic depiction of the amiable French captain Renault.
Once again, technically for a 1942 film even though it is B&W, the music and photography is slick. Winner of three academy awards for Best Picture, Best writing and Best Director, Casablanca touches on many themes like greed, selfishness, love and redemption. In a nutshell Casablanca remains a real classic which should be watched by everyone.
