A ring of nostalgia

If and when I get to travel down memory lane, it is usually a few years down the past to before the kid, or before the kids, or at the most to, just before getting married.

Some more internal statistizing(?) shows, that your truly tends to go down 5-6 years down at most under normal circumstances and rarely past a decade when some deep emotional disturbance happens. Extreme elation or depression seem to open some strange doors in the brain which are otherwise collecting cobwebs and the rare flashback happens!

The fact that most of what we see in our daily life seems to dwell increasingly on the present, be it the blogosphere, SUN TV (old movies from our childhood are a rarity), the lack of other TV channels at home, books (Kite runner appealed so much, mainly because it brought back memories of the late seventies!) and things that connect to the past are few and far between are possible reasons.

Imagine my surprise then on watching this Tamizh movie at home called "Kannum Kannum", I find myself going down memory lane, not 5-6 years, not 10 years but a full 30! The movie was different, with good acting performances but ended up being too long. Would definitely recommend a watch with a nice DVD remote that can Fast forward with subtitles on and the sound still playing! What the movie lacked, it made up by connecting a few critical neurons in my head!

This family in the movie, was playing "ring ball" on a large terrace! Tell me people, when was the last time you played "ring ball" or "ring" or "ring toss", as we used to call it? A simple, almost solid white rubber toroid, light enough to be tossed around and caught, but heavy enough to hold traction with your fingers? The texture of a ball, the feel of a frizbee, a unisex sport for all family?

Drifted into the past effortlessly, after watching that scene. So many great memories of playing "ring" as a child with my brother, sister, aunts, kids we had hardly met in houses we rented. Even caught glimpses of the faces of some of those kids while dreaming with my eyes open.

Do they even sell these rings anymore? If they do, going to ask MIL to get one for the kids, (okay, okay, it is really for me!) when she comes back here.

Time to open up more doors inside my head and create some new ones inside the kids heads so they can dream a few decades from now!

"Ring" toss anyone?

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Movie Sequences

It is common these days to see Indian movies blatantly copy foreign movies with a small twist in the end. For some reason, the entire scene by scene lifting of another movie has reduced drastically in the last year.

The new trend is to just recreate segments of hit western or south east asian movies. Segments as in, a series of stunt sequences, family situations, drama situations etc. Needless to say, if they never gave any credit to the original after copying an entire movie, they are not going to give any credit for copying segments.

The funny thing is the arguments between me and the Mrs. on these sequences. Somehow she manages to forget the original sequence and is amazed by the creativity of the Director or actor or cinematographer! That gets to me more than the director. It is easier for me to show relation to the original when the source of the sequences is another Indian movie.

For example, the movie we watched recently can be expressed with the equation:

Thotaa = Thotti Jaya + Fanaa - Chimpu

where Chimpu is the fudge factor, or in movie terms the sludge factor!

Here is another sequence:

Hero is cornered on a high rise building
He is standing on the parapet wall on the top floor looking down
The old and wise cop is puffing and panting but nevertheless has a gun pointed at the hero
Cop delivers a dialogue about how the entire building is surrounded and it is "surrender" or "death by falling"!
Hero lets cop count
Just as cop counts one hero spots a train in a distance. (the tracks are not even close to the building, but what the hell!)
When the cop counts three, there is a .5 second pause and the hero falls, arms out
Then we see the rope he is holding
He swings a distance of around half a mile and precisely lands on the top of the train.
The hero looks back and smiles
The old cop who looks like he needs eye glasses rated +5.5 in the right eye and +6.5 in the left, gives a wry smile and identifies the hero's face from the train top a mile away..

Familiar??? Lets see what you think the original is!

Here is another one.

Boy comes to girls parents house to be introduced.
Boy has just lost his job before joining girl on the trip
He needs money
The prospective father in law figures out that he has money troubles
So they have a race (running, go-cart, whatever) and if the boy wins the girls dad will loan him the money, if not the boy should leave the girl alone and walk away!
In the same movie girl stops talking to boy because he hid his "losing the job" part from her. Eventually boy helps girls dad join girls mom (they are fighting as well) and the parents help girl join boy! The director of the Tamizh copy is even supposed to have attributed the sequence to a wrong original! If you are a movie trivia buff name the original, copy and the wrong original mentioned in the media..

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Like mother like Daughter-in-law??

We have all heard of
"like mother like daughter"

for the first time, we hear "like mother, like daughter-in-law"

San got this movie "Thotta" from the local Indian grocery store.

The first opening in the title credits is a picture of Indian Congress Party Suprema (female version of Supermo.. I am using my Spanish skills here!) and the caption

Baratha Annai
Thirumathi Indira Gandhi avargalin
maru avataram

Thirumathi Sonia Gandhi avargalukku
iththiraippadaththai
Apranikkirom.

Translation :

India's mother
Mrs. Indira Gandhi's
alternate avatar

Mrs. Sonia Gandhi
this movie is our offering.

We live in interesting times!

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