Friday, December 21, 2007

hum dil de chuke sanam




NJOY :)

THE KITE RUNNER


Khaled Hosseini's stunning debut novel The Kite Runner follows a young boy, Amir, as he faces the challenges that confront him on the path to manhood—testing friendships, finding love, cheating death, accepting faults, and gaining understanding. Living in Afghanistan in the 1960s, Amir enjoys a life of privilege that is shaped by his brotherly friendship with Hassan, his servant's son. Amir lives in constant want of his father's attention, feeling that he is a failure in his father's eyes. Hassan, on the other hand, seems to be able to do no wrong. Their friendship is a complex tapestry of love, loss, privilege, and shame.

Striving to be the son his father always wanted, Amir takes on the weight of living up to unrealistic expectations and places the fate of his relationship with his father on the outcome of a kite running tournament, a popular challenge in which participants must cut down the kites of others with their own kite. Amir wins the tournament. Yet just as he begins to feel that all will be right in the world, a tragedy occurs with his friend Hassan in a back alley on the very streets where the boys once played. This moment marks a turning point in Amir's lifeone whose memory he seeks to bury by moving to America. There he realizes his dream of becoming a writer and marries for love but the memory of that fateful day will prove too strong to forget. Eventually it draws Amir back to Afghanistan to right the wrongs that began that day in the alley and continued in the days, months, and years that followed.

ORE KADAL


This is a film that turns out to be significant not merely for its singular plot, but for the tower house performances of its leading cast as well. It starts off with a series of vivacious shots of its protagonist making love; and in conversation, looking harried and a tad jaded. Mammootty lets go of an alleged reticence and is at ease being the unfussy womanizer; the slipshod gait or the unyielding gaze as he words those hazy lines in an outlandish accent lingers around as a trademark of a seasoned actor who knows his way about a job that he simply loves.Meera builds up her feat not out of grand gestures, but out of countless subtle little moments of growing love; the frenzy and the fury of a hapless woman caught in the midst of a surge of passion that leaves her devastated has been dexterously captured. Bela is an otherwise uncomplicated persona that should throw no fresh challenges to the fantastic actor in Ramya Krishnan. But the kind of anguish that she carries somewhere deep inside reflects particularly in her hazel eyes that refuse to shed a tear. The obstinacy and sturdiness of a bruised heart is all too evident in a staunch stare or a casual smirk.

Naren as the mystified spouse confidently underplays his part to perfection as well.The vital tale simply glows and demands a genuine attention to the nuances of voice and gesture. This is an account that could so easily be vulgarized, could be reduced to obvious elements of seduction, sex and melodramatic parting. Mammootty and Meera weave a spell, and it is based on that particular knowledge of love and self that transcends all ages and time.

get a grip, gal

There are times in one’s life when you’ve just got to tell yourself – get on with it. You can’t cling on to the past or beg for a future that won’t ever take shape. Sometimes, life is a whole lot easier and fun if you can just put your head down and work your way through things without thinking of what could be.

Right now, am reminded of Oscar Wilde’s quote: “MOST PEOPLE ARE OTHER PEOPLE.” Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

I don’t wanna live my life being someone else. I don’t want to die as someone else. I want my own life, and my own death. However insignificant it might be in the scheme of things.