FotoWeek DC 2015

For folks in DC, MD and VA, a week-long photography festival and exhibition is currently on at  various locations in DC and Virginia. If you're in town, more than a few look like they could be worth your time.

A complete list of events is at this link: http://www.fotodc.org/fotoweekdc/ 

Starting today: "In a special nighttime display from November 9-12, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum will project images onto its exterior walls that feature religious and ethnic minorities persecuted in Iraq. These stunning photos were taken as part of a bearing witness trip to raise awareness about attacks on civilians in the region. The exhibition will begin with an opening program the evening of Monday, November 9, featuring a discussion with experts who will explore what is driving the conflict and what can be done to end it." More at: http://www.fotodc.org/events/2015/11/9/exhibitions-nighttime-projections

I was at the main photography exhibition space at what used to be the official residence of the Spanish Ambassadors to the US (now a Spanish Cultural Center) in DC. The photographs are everything from cute to stunning to gut wrenching.

There is one particular section on the fight for LGBT rights in Russia (part of the Pulitzer Center exhibit) and this alone is worth going out to see. There will be a panel discussion during this week that will include one of the activists who is currently in the US seeking asylum.

And then there are the delightful ones, such as the series on dogs who freestyle dance with their humans - yes, that is apparently a thing. Titled 'Everyone Likes to Cha Cha Cha,' the photographer of the exhibit, Bogo Anton, explained that she was exploring the contradictory relationships we humans have with animals ("we eat some, hate some and love the rest") and stumbled upon this dog-human freestyle dance community. She spent three months traveling across the US, photographing and documenting the pairs and their performances.

As part of FotoWeek, there are movies, panel discussions, photo exhibits (including those of contest winners), photojournalism exhibits (images from Afghanistan, Iraq), and a documentary about Dorothea Lange made by her grand-daughter.

Documentary: The Last Man on the Moon

Anytime I hear about a human in space, I take all of about 10 seconds to marvel at the level of technological sophistication that is necessary to accomplish space flight. The rest of the time, it's the human story that leaves me awestruck.

In fact, it's the same with any endeavor (such as climbing mountains or plumbing the depths of the ocean) that involves extreme hardship and whose demands are many: an undying commitment to the cause, a faith in science and numbers, street smarts and book smarts, an adventurous spirit, the willingness to sacrifice comfort, and the ability to stare down a fear of the unknown.

Needless to say, documentaries, books and movies that give the human angle in these journeys the treatment it deserves rank high on my favorites list.

Soon to make an entry into that list is a documentary titled The Last Man on the Moon that's already seen advance screenings in the UK. According to Universe Today,

“The Last Man on the Moon,” from UK-based Mark Stewart Productions, tells the story of Gene Cernan and his accomplishments against the backdrop of the Apollo era, when superpowers competed for dominance in space and hotshot flyboys became international heroes. With firsthand accounts from Cernan himself and his family, along with several other astronauts and NASA celebrities, it’s an emotional and intimate account of America’s last lunar voyage.

I'm hoping it'll make its way into the US sooner rather than later.

~~~~~~~

For updates, visit the documentary's Facebook page and hit 'Like'

For a trailer, visit Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/92046183

~~~~~~~

Update, June 18, 2014: I was able to find a link that I can embed in this post. So here it is!

Ice Skating Meets Bollywood

Left me with a silly grin on my face. Enjoy!

Footloose Friday - VIII

When I dabbled as a disc jockey for a radio station in India, the quest to make the shows interesting was never-ending. For two hours each week I anchored shows that played an hour of English songs and an hour of Hindi songs. The third hour was devoted to listener requests, so the radio jockeys had no control over what songs would be played. I would try to mold the English and Hindi play lists around a theme - Rafi songs, or songs of the 60s, Oscar-nominated songs; or compile trivia about the songs that went on air; or make up quizzes about the songs that the audience would call in or message the answers to.

One evening as I was trying to arrive at a play list for the next day, I came across a CD in the radio station's library. Almost lost in the tightly-packed rows on the shelves was a compilation of the title songs from the James Bond movies. I had played some of those songs from the CDs of the artists that had sung them (Golden Eye from a Tina Turner CD, for example) and I had wondered why no one had ever thought of collecting all the James Bond movie songs in one place. Phew! That one CD made my prep work easy that day.

Golden Eye is hands down my favorite Bond song, followed closely by McCartney's Live and Let Die.






And then there is Carly Simon's Nobody Does It Better from The Spy Who Loved Me.



I've always enjoyed this song whenever I've listened to it and the other Carly Simon song I am familiar with, You're So Vain.

These days I just listen to her with a new ear, a new understanding and a new respect for her art.

In this heartbreaking but beautifully written personal essay in The Daily Beast titled How I Found My Voice, Simon traces the history of her struggle with stuttering. Who knew!

Here Simon describes the frist time the words got stuck in her throat:

As I tried to speak this line, a snake that had been hibernating near my oesophagus, grabbed at and strangled the beginning of each word. As the word “fair” struggled to live, the serpent constricted its passage and as if deprived of air, I balked two or three times at the ‘F’ before the word emerged ravaged and in need of oxygen.

This was the unhappy and astonishing birth of my stammer or at least my first gripping self-conscious awareness of it. My sisters and cousins, if they noticed this—and I can’t imagine they didn’t—must have been puzzled by the strange new guttural utterances. They likely imagined they were temporary and didn’t even consider to do or say anything about it. This would fade and disappear—like scratches, bruises, and babysitters.

[...]

For at least the grammar school and high-school years, there was merciless teasing, graduating by about eighth grade to a less beastly imitation and “behind the back of me” fun. In the early years, I was beaten into states of self-hatred and begging to go “home.” Home plate. Please let me go home. To my mother. I was assaulted, bruised, battered, and broken. I knew the answers in class and couldn’t raise my hand. I had to learn that the first devastating lesson was to learn to have the courage to face life.

My mother and I had the closest of times a child and mother can have. I would sit on her lap and we would practise the words. Any word. She would rock me and relax me. Sometimes a word would roll off my tongue, perfectly, passing the throat guards undetected and my mother would say: “See darling, you can do it!”

It's an amazing and humbling story of how she still struggles with speaking, but found along the way that she could sing. And so beautifully at that!

If you'd like to read the article, please do (click on the 'How I Found My Voice' link above), but come back and tell me which of the Bond songs you like best.

Related Post: My Day as a Radio Jockey.

This is the eighth post in the Footloose Friday series. The rest are here.

Freida Pinto - the Girl of the Moment

Freida Pinto, photographed by Micaela Rossato
Source: Vanity Fair
I hadn't seen Slumdog yet by the time the Golden Globes rolled around. So it was with mighty interest and curiosity that I watched the Slumdog table. The table erupted every time Slumdog won an award, the two young actors being the most boisterous of all, understandably. I learnt the names of the new actors, the screenwriter, watched with delight as the familiar faces from oh, so far away mingled with the more ubiquitous familiar faces, and saw a tall, lanky Indian actress look like she belonged on an international stage.

The same youthfulness and charm so evident at the awards ceremony transferred to the guest chairs on the Ellen DeGeneres show, her enthusiasm and apparent disbelief at her current station in life writ large in her body language. Pinto leaned forward eagerly to answer the host's questions, turning every so often to address an indulgent audience. She excitedly recounted her experiences at the awards show, describing her encounter with Angelina Jolie and Clint Eastwood (who, she said, she had been wanting to meet ever since she saw Million Dollar Baby).

Since then she's been on a whirlwind tour of the talk-show circuit and award shows (YouTube puts out more than 350 videos following a search). Nino's Mum traces Pinto's red carpet fashion graph via photographs and sums it up neatly in one sentence - This girl is comfortable in her skin.

Now comes the icing on the cake - Pinto is Vanity Fair's latest Vanities girl and the photograph you see above appears in its latest issue (March 2009). The magazine assesses Pinto's prospects thusly:

[T]he Vanities opener now features an up-and-coming actress in a 50s-style pinup shot. These shapely ingénues are on the cusp of fame or have just hit it big; they have names you need to know and faces you won’t have trouble remembering.

The only question now remaining is this: Will the girl of the moment be the woman for all seasons?

P.S.:

• Check out the links in Nino's Mum's post and Daily Cherez for more Freida commentary.
• Vanity Fair's Vanities Girls slideshow appears here.
  
  

The Oscar Nominations Are Out!

Complete list here.

Four acting awards nominations for Doubt. I wrote about it earlier, but will say here that I'm so glad Amy Adams and Viola Davis are nominated. The Streep and Hoffman nominations were a given. Their roles were difficult to play. So much of this movie is about feelings and thoughts. You expect them to pull it off, however, no matter how difficult. Amy Adams and Viola Davis, on the other hand, had reactive roles. They were not setting the agenda, they were responding to what two other stronger personalities were doing to them. As the naive and impressionable Sister James, Amy Adams made you want to hug her and console her, and as the mother caught in the cross-fire between a domineering husband, a son who's trying to find his way and a church that seems to giving with one hand and taking away with the other, Viola Davis' performance was heart-rending and evocative. How did she manage to pull off a runny nose along with the teary eyes? When the camera lingered on her for so long?

Slumdog (two noms for best song, one for best music, cinematography, best picture, editing best director, adapted screenplay, sound mixing and sound editing) and The Wrestler (Rourke already won the Golden Globe) are on our list for this weekend. Don't know which we'll make it to. We saw the trailer for The Wrestler and it seemed like an out-and-out tear-jerker, which the husband wants to see too. Expecting to be red-eyed no matter which one we pick.

Any thoughts on the other movies in the various lists?

The Famous Five for a new generation

A recent article mentioned a new Famous Five animated series in which the original five are older and George is married to an Indian character named Ravi.

Too many fond memories of curling up with Enid Blyton books during summer holidays, so had to go find out.



Here's the low down:

Producers say the animated tales remain faithful to the themes of storytelling, mystery and adventure central to the original books but add a contemporary twist.

They feature 12-year-old Anglo-Indian Jo, short for Jyoti - a Hindi word meaning light - who, like her mother George, is a tomboy and the group's team leader.

Other characters include Allie, a 12-year-old Californian "shopaholic" who enjoys going out and getting "glammed up" but is packed off to the British countryside to live with her cousins.

Her mother was Anne in the Famous Five, a reluctant adventurer who has now become a successful art dealer. The team is completed by adventure junkie Max, who is 13-year-old Julian's son; Dylan, the 11-year-old son of Dick, and dog Timmy.

The entire article is here, more coverage here, and here's a video clip from the animated series. There's also a plan afoot for bringing back the original characters in a new series of novels.

About a year ago, I went looking here for these and other Enid Blyton novels for C, but I had no luck. Our local library had one title and I found some obscure Enid Blyton book on Amazon for the ridiculously expensive price of $90. Now his grandparents and aunt just send them over from India.

Illustration from telegraph.co.uk.

The Superman of Malegaon

"This is the first time I am taking on Hollywood. I hope to get overseas rights for my Superman film," Nasir said with a dimpled smile. "There are many flying scenes. When my Superman flies, Malegaon will fly, too."

There is one problem. Malegaon's Superman is no muscleman. Instead, he is wafer-thin, wears flip-flops and has cotton strings hanging from his shorts. His father makes him sit on a truck tire and pushes him into a river, ordering him, "Go save Malegaon!"

But when this caricature tries to rescue children drowning in the river, he begins to gasp for breath and has to be pulled out. He wants to prevent children from falling off the roof but gets stuck in the electric wires. He slips into the gutter when he tries to stop a school bus with his hands. He is thrown into a tub of milk to gain strength; he catches a chill instead.

The entire story here. Do read. Sure to make you smile and marvel at the creativity and the will of one man.

Quantum of Solace

By Karen Ballard/Sony Pictures
Alert: Before you continue any further, this post contains spoilers!

A few days ago the Washington Post ran a photograph of Daniel Craig as James Bond with a caption that ran something like this - "We have no good reason to run this photograph on this page, but jeez, just look at the guy!"

And look at him a lot of people did. The movie raked in $70 million in its first weekend in the US.
I'm not a James Bond connoisseur, so I don't know all the nit-picky things I'm supposed to be missing (I do know that the vodka line, the "Bond, James Bond" line and Q have gone AWOL, but that's about it) that die hard Bond fans keep a track of, but I can say that I enjoy the Daniel Craig versions far better. Better than even the Pierce Brosnan ones.

Quantum of Solace (QoS) begins where Casino Royale left off, with the capture of the man Bond thinks has the answers to the question of why Vesper, his love interest in Casino Royale, betrayed him. The car chase along a coastal road leading up to a dungeon in Siena, Italy is thrilling, yes, but more bruising than usual Bond fare, as are the multiple fights that dot the movie. The energy in this movie is barely contained within the movie screen. The camera, the music and the actors vie with each other to stay ahead of the other two. Bond gets more than just the shoulder pads of his suit dusty - by the end of the movie he's had a bloodied nose, myriad nicks and cuts on his face, biceps and chest (this Bond shows a lot more skin than his women), and at least three men have died at his hands.

Bond engages in relentless pursuit of violence frequently channeling Terminator and Bourne, which is why it is all the more breathtaking when he pauses to show some heart (as when his ex-colleague, Mathis, lies dying in his arms). The moment passes in a flash, however, once Mathis actually dies. Bonds dumps the body in a trash collector nearby and appropriates the cash in Mathis' wallet.

There are a couple of funny lines in the movie, but not the usual, erudite, smart-alecky ones that you might expect from say Roger Moore.

What was jarring, though, was the role of the CIA. It took at few minutes to digest the fact that the CIA was with the bad guys and to realign the alliances in my head. And there was no indication that the CIA characters sincerely believed in the larger good of their actions, as is a common justification for American excesses (A Few Good Men, Body of Lies (another excellent movie)). Out and out cynicism seemed to be the flavor of the day.

Early last week, a couple of days after I watched this movie, the Daily Dish had linked to Juan Cole's review of QoS. Cole give us context and sets up the politics of the movie beautifully.

But this Bond film is explicit that the United States under Bush has become the bad guy, that US intelligence is in league with rogue mercenaries and brutal, rapist-generals who plot coups against elected governments.

[...]

Craig's Bond is an intimation of the sort of Britain that could have been, if Tony Blair had stood up to Bush and refused to be dragged into an illegal war of choice, and into other actions and policies that profoundly contradicted the principles on which the Labour Party had been founded...

The politics of the movie aside (although it is very intriguing) QoS is and out-and-out thriller and the movie does not suffer from the brooding presence of two very beautiful, very angry people bent on payback. In short, go see it.

******

Updated:

to add a link to the official Bond site and to say that the Alicia Keys/Jack White theme song is awesome!

Scenes of Philadelphia

National Treasure (the movie, the first one, which was shot in Philadelphia and DC) and the John Adams miniseries on HBO, based on the book by David McCullough, both turned out to be pretty popular in our house. If you have the time and inclination, the John Adams series is worth watching, not least for the acting. Paul Giamatti (as John Adams), Laura Linney (as Abigail Adams, the wife and mother of American Presidents), Stephen Dillane (as Thomas Jefferson) and Tom Wilkinson (as Ben Franklin) are brilliant.

We drove up to Philadelphia, where the idea of America took root, a couple of weekends ago. It's a pleasant enough drive up from DC. Philadelphia is a great city to live in, visit or even just drive through. It's lovely on many levels - the people are nice and friendly, the streets are made for walking, the buildings are history unto themselves, the food is great.

The city was buzzing. Both Obama and Palin happened to be campaigning or doing events during that time.

It was fun to go back, more than 16 years after I first lived there briefly, to see things I had not had the time (or the awareness of) to see and to see familiar places through C's eyes. We mostly spent the two days hanging out in the city center, walked up to the waterfront (where I'd been to a Max Roach concert many years ago with some friends; on the walk back to the apartment, they had sung the theme song from Married With Children at the top of their lungs while I looked on bemusedly - back then I had no idea what it was), saw Liberty Bell and took a tour of Independence Hall.

Liberty Bell

Independence Hall

Inside the courtyard of Independence Hall

The room in which the Continental Congress met and deliberated.

The chair is the only original item remaining from the days of the Revolutionary War

For a bit of flashback, here's a part of an essay about my first days in Philadelphia:

This past 13th marked 13 years since the day I arrived in the US - with two huge suitcases, one handbag and one really thick jacket my mom and I bought from a pavement seller in the Jayanagar 4th block shopping complex.

The suitcases contained everything I would need and all that I could call my own during my first few months in the US - rasam powder, sambar powder, molaga pudi, and assorted snacks and pickles, all of my favorite clothes plus a few new ones purchased in bouts of frenzied shopping as the d-day arrived, money orders for school, passport, I-20, and all the collective hopes, aspirations and fears of a family sending their girl off to a foreign land thousands of miles away.

My parents and brother traveled with me from Bangalore to Bombay to see me off on the Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt. It was an ungodly hour but the airport was bathed in undying light, alive, busy, buzzing with people trying to manage farewells and immigration forms and carts and unwieldy suitcases and sleepy children and bubbling emotions all at once. As I turned to wave a final goodbye, I saw the pinched, drawn faces of my parents and brother through suddenly hot, stinging eyes. The fact that I was going and going alone did not sink in until I passed immigration and faced the long, nearly-empty passage to the Lufthansa gate.

[...]

I hated Philadelphia those first few weeks.

Everything seemed starker, darker. I was alone most of the time - on the way to school, at school, while figuring out what classes to take, at the bank. The days were getting shorter and colder and all my classes were at night.

The friends I was staying with were very nice and always made sure I ate when I was home, but they had their own lives, their own personal crises and their own inside jokes (one of the girls was a big Oprah fan and the other girls used to tease her about it. The first time I heard them teasing her, I thought, wow! she must really love the opera to want to watch it on TV everyday!).

The entire post is here.

Watching The Chronicles of Narnia on Christmas Day

Christmas Day 2005 dawned grey and drizzly in Virginia. All hopes for a white Christmas melted away in the unseasonably warm temperatures. As is the case every year, the question of what we would do the rest of the day was hanging in the air. Most of our Christian friends were busy with church and family and Christmas lunches and dinners. Most of our friends who were in the same boat as us (i.e., were not busy with Christmas) had gone away to visit family during the holidays or lived in Maryland and we did not feel like driving all the way up and around the beltway to meet them.

During past Christmases, we had ended up going to the temple and to the free performances on the Millenium stage at the Kennedy Center before going out to dinner at any restaurant that was open (usually an Indian restaurant).

This time around we were at home in Virginia for three weeks on a "home" visit from Bangalore where we currently live. It was good to be back again, back among shops (Trader Joe's, Whole Foods Market), restaurants (Big Bowl, Panera Bread, Chipotle, Romano's), streets and landmarks that were sorely missed for over a year. How good it felt to drive around in the car (without the need for a driver) and tune on the radio to listen to NPR or Eliot in the Morning on DC 101 (someone said he was gone, hope it's not true!).

Best of all, it was good to be home, be able to bake in my oven (my son was probably happier about that), to be able to cook the dishes I couldn't in India without going into a whole lot of trouble (penne pasta with that chicken sausage from Trader Joe's) and to just sit on the sofa wrapped in a fleece blanket and watch the snow flurries settle on the deck and the tall trees in the backyard.

We'd been home about a week and a half by then and had just begun to get over the jet lag, a particularly ferocious one this time around which had us crashing by five in the evening and waking up every morning at two am. Although the weather was inhospitable, we did not particularly feel like staying cooped up indoors. So after breakfast, we hatched a plan to watch a movie. We had wanted to see Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe even since we got there and we decided to try our luck. Were movie theatres open on Christmas Day? We could not remember, but we were going to find out.

In our absence from Virginia, a brand new theater had opened up about ten minutes away from our house. We decided to head out there. By this time, it was pouring. We piled into the car and drove to the movie theater. Aside from church parking lots, all the roads leading up to the theater were deserted as was the theater itself. It was around 11:30 am by this time and we resigned ourselves to not being able to watch a movie that day.

Just then, a car pulled up behind us, a man got out of the car, pulled his jacket up over his head and ran towards the ticket counter. A young girl in the movie theater uniform came out of the building and got into the ticket kiosk. Hurray! There's going to be a movie after all! So I went in as well and found out that Narnia was playing at 1:30 pm.

The good news was that there was a movie; the bad news, we had two hours to kill. We decided to make a quick trip to Washington, DC. There was no traffic to speak of, so it would take us hardly 15 minutes to reach downtown. We hand't gone into the city at all since we arrived and it would be good to see all the monuments, museums and yes, even the federal buildings.

After a whirlwind tour of DC and a viewing of all the watery, hazy monuments that flowed down our windows onto little rivultes on the streets, we headed right back. Lunch had to be taken care of. We headed to a Thai restaurant, the only one that was open in the mall across from the multiplex. The only other guests in the restaurant were a family of four, decked in all their Christmas finery. They must have just finished Christmas church services.

Lunch was the usual green curry/yellow curry items with a dish of Phad Thai thrown in. It was delicious. We had a view of the ticket counter from the restaurant and we could see a crowd building. It was time to go.

Once inside the movie theater, we headed for the last row of seats and pretty soon there were enough movie goers for families to have to split up and sit rows away from each other. Right next to us was a Middle-eastern family and most of the other audience members looked like they did not have anywhere else to go on Christmas Day either.

As the movie progressed the irony of this situation was not lost upon us. Here we were, in this temple of entertainment, gathered together to watch a tale of the triumph of good over evil, of sacrifice, forgiveness and of the savior rising from the dead.

Crying at the Movies

It was pitch dark in the small Odeon Theater in Washington, DC. The movie had ended, the screen had gone black, but there was none of the creaking of seats, the quiet conversations or shuffling that usually marks the end of a movie. Everyone was rooted to their seats. The only sound audible was the sniffling of a hundred noses punctuated by a few sobs here and there.

Finally, as the movie theater staff came in to clean up the popcorn cartons and the soda cans and bottles, people slowly rose out of their seats and filed out quietly, many still sniffling and sobbing.

The movie was Life is Beautiful (the much more mellifluous La Vita e Bella in Italian). We had all laughed, shook our heads in wry understanding and become tense as the father, played very endearingly by Roberto Benigni, desperately tried to save his own life and that of his young son and tried even harder to save his son's innocence in a Nazi concentration camp. Benigni's antics had kept our spirits up and at the edge of our seats for much of movie. Even his character's death towards the end had evoked shock, may be a little bit of sadness, but not the kind to bring forth tears.

It was only when - after the allied forces had liberated the camp - the young boy suddenly came upon his mother on the road to their town and had fallen into her outstretched arms screaming in joy at having found her at last that tears started pricking the back of my eyes. As mother and son hugged and fell on the ground laughing and crying at the same time, we had all cried, our tension released at this sudden, surprising and happy development.

The reasons why I'm lachrymose at movies are various. Sometimes it's because the character whose voice speaks to me the most loudly and clearly is going through an intensely sad experience; sometimes it's just the connection at a very basic level between two characters - where one shows an act of kindness towards the other, for example; at other times the tears are brought on by an intense feeling of relief at the resolution of some conflict.

The movie I cried hardest at was Cinema Paradiso in the scene where Salvatore finds out that the old reel operator (the projectionist) at Cinema Paradiso, a movie theater in a small village, had carefully spliced together all the bits of film lying on the projection room floor and made a reel for him. As a young boy, Salvatore had begged the projectionist to give him the bits of film but the projectionist had steadfastly refused. Salvatore grows up, moves away to the city and loses touch with small town relationships and values.

He comes back to his village one day and discovers that the old man is dead but has left something for him. It turns out to be the reel. As Salvatore watches the reel with tears rolling down his cheeks, you see, through an adult's eyes, how absurd it was to have wanted the bits of film. Spliced together, they make no sense. But the reel is a symbol of the profound emotional connection between an old man and a young boy brought together by their love of movies. With enormous affection and love for the young boy, the old man had taken the trouble to make something that he knew Salvatore, even as a grown man, would appreciate.

Then there was Boys on the Side in which Robin, Mary Louise-Parker's character, is dying of AIDS and Jane, Whoopi Goldberg's character, sings her Roy Orbison's "Anything you want, you got it." Of course, Robin can't have anything she wants because she's dying. The scene is made more poignant because Robin and Jane start out being crabby at each other but then reach the kind of mature understanding that everlasting friendships are made of. Suffice to say I bawled.

Munnabhai M.B.B.S. is another one of those bawl-worthy movies. The movie had me in stitches for the most part, but certain scenes suddenly brought on tears, such as the one in which Munnabhai impulsively hugs a janitor who's been having a bad day.

Father of the Bride evoked a rivulet of tears when the father, after several desperate attempts, is unable to connect with his daughter before she goes off on her honeymoon; Veer Zara, when Veer pulls out Zara's anklet from his pocket and Zara pulls up her skirt just that little bit to show she's been wearing the other one by itself for all of the years they've been apart.

The thing is I never cried at movies, and would stare, fascinated, at any one who did. As a teenager, I couldn't understand why any one would cry at movies. Didn't they know that movies were not real? That so-and-so is not really dying?

I really couldn't tell you why all that changed or exactly when. Perhaps, as you grow older, your repertoire of emotions grows and you are more able to appreciate, understand and identify with a broader range.

Whatever the reason, my tear glands are getting a lot of use these days.

United 93, the Movie: Would You Watch It?

Last week's Time magazine carried Richard Corliss' report on the soon-to-be released movie United 93, about the fourth plane hijacked on September 11, 2001 - one that was intended as a missile as the other three hijacked planes were used that day, but the one in which the passangers heroically foiled the hijackers' plans. The plane eventually crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The only fatalities resulting from that plane crash were all on that plane.

The movie, written and directed by Paul Greengrass, sports the following plot line: "A real time account of the events on United Flight 93, one of the planes hijacked on 9/11 that crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania when passengers foiled the terrorist plot."

It has a cast of virtual unknowns, most of them with real-life experience of the parts they play in the movie.

For example, according to the Time magazine report, "J.J. Johnson, who plays the captain of Flight 93, is a real United pilot. Trish Gates, who plays head flight attendant Sandy Bradshaw, was a real United flight attendant, Ben Sliney, national operations manager for the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration]...appears as himself. Lewis Alsamari, who plays one of the hijackers, spent a year in the Iraqi army."

All this seems to point to one thing: the production team has gone through considerable effort to make the movie as faithful to the real thing as possible.

Which leaves me with the question, do I want to watch this movie?

I haven't even been able to bring myself to watch the movie's trailer yet. One of the major reasons for this, I think, is that I know exactly what is going to happen in this movie. From the minute the movie starts, from the time the doors of the plane are closed shut, I know that it is building up to the horrific ending, no matter what transpires in between, no matter how heroic the passengers were, no matter that the terrorists did not succeed in their plan, no matter that the lives of hundreds, possibly thousands of people on the ground were spared because of what this movie will show me happened on that plane that day.

Part of it also has to do with what we went through that day, although it is next to nothing compared to what the passengers on United Flight 93 put themselves through or what the passengers on the other planes and the victims on the ground and their families must have gone through.

For all the utter confusion we all went through that day, it is a day whose events I can remember and recount with clarity, more than four years after it happened. It was a day that brought home the meaning of "foreboding". I watched the second plane ram into one of the twin towers on live TV, heard the third crash into the Pentagon eight miles away from my home on northern Virginia, and had my husband be stuck for more than three hours in the one of the most poorly managed evacuations from Washington, D.C.

To add to the confusion was the fact that there was no information forthcoming from any part of the administration. TV anchors were merely echoing my thoughts - what more could they do? They had as much information as I did; we were all watching live footage of our sense of safety, security and comfort in our chosen way of life unraveling. Two of my neighbors perished in the Pentagon and many came home shaken, unable to eat for days. For months after 9/11 we had to drive past a wounded, blackened and bruised Pentagon on our way to Washington, D.C.

I am not sure when, or if, I will bring myself to watch it.

Andrew Sullivan at the Daily Dish echoes this sentiment.

And yet, I will not see this movie, whatever its merits. The trauma is still too close. That day is still etched in me, as in all of us. It was a specific, unique trauma for those heroes on the plane; but it was also an emotional devastation for anyone who loves this country.

He goes on to say something more that raises the question, is it too early for a Hollywood representation (no matter how closely it tracks the real-life events) of 9/11?

In some ways, I regard the acts of those men and women to be an almost sacred moment in the history of America and of freedom. And sometimes, the sacred is best respected through silence. Sometimes, the greatest deeds, like the most monstrous acts, are best left unrepresented. They stand alone. They demand to be left alone. One day, commemmorate. But do not so swiftly represent. Shakespeare often left the greatest moments in his plays off-stage. They have more power there.

United 93 is slated for release in the US on April 28, 2006.

Crossposted on Desicritics.

Peter Weir to Direct Shantaram

According to a PTI report that was carried in The Hindu, Peter Weir is all set to direct Johnny Depp as Shantaram. Master and Commander, Far Side of the World is one of N's favorite movies and I've enjoyed that and many of Weir's other films - Picnic at Hanging Rock, Dead Poets Society, The Truman Show.

Johnny Depp, Peter Weir and Shantaram - a deadly combination to say the least.

Swades

Swades (until I heard it pronounced on TV, I read it as "suedes" and was wondering what the movie was about) was the first movie V* and I saw after we moved to India.

Now, Swades (meaning "home country") is about an Indian living in the US (and working at NASA, no less) who, on a short visit to India, discovers that he does not want to go back to the US for various reasons: romantic, patriotic, nostalgic, etc., etc.

We enjoyed the movie. Shah Rukh Khan was remarkably and aptly subdued, Gayathri Joshi was a sight for sore eyes, and the movie had some nice music by A.R. Rehman (love Yoon hi chala chal rahi, Yeh tara woh tara, and Sanwariya, sanwariya).

But for us, the movie turned out to be memorable for an entirely different reason. Mohan Bhargav, Shah Rukh's character happens to live and work in the DC area. Most of the first half of the movie was devoted to his life in the US, so we saw many scenes of DC, which, until very recently, had been our home.

So, there we were, expats in our own home country, sitting in a theater in Bangalore, watching a movie about an NRI wanting to move back to India for good, and missing home.