Update for 2008

I must confess I had forgotten about the existence of this blog! The truth is I am becoming increasingly neurotic probably as a result of senescence :) In any case, I will try to post more regularly at least about places I've visited and liked coz you know I am getting forgetful..and did I mention neurotic?

Blast from the past

I have a tendency to listen to music that is at least a few decades old when I am under stress or I just want to be forget something unpleasant. But it is not any kind of music. It has to be composed by Ilayaraja and it must be from the 1980s or early 90s. Why this is so? I have a few clues ...Maybe it is from the far away past that it distances me from the present ..Maybe these songs have something special either in composition or tune...Can't really give any examples as its tough to pick just a handful. But there is one obvious problem, when there is a lot of stress, I run out of my Maestro's 80s fix and there is really a limited supply here. Sigh!

Hindi movies

I am quite impressed by the Hindi movies recently. When I say recently, I am referring to the past few years. I watched Fire, Parineeta and Omkara the past weekend. I enjoyed watching all the three of them and had the feeling that Hindi movies have come a long way. I had the impression that most of them were just crap and do not have any semblance of reality but was happily surprised to be proven wrong. I thought Fire was extremely well-made and taken in a beautiful way. All the characters were well-etched out and the story progresses very naturally.

Parineeta was taken well too but the biggest plus in this movie was casting. Saif and Vidya Balan were awesome. Vidya Balan was gorgeous and she can act! I wish she had played Aishwarya's role in Guru. Now I like Ash but I really wish she would just stick to print ads and modeling. In her introductory song in Guru, her expressions were annoying but thankfully she did a decent job in the second half. I got the feeling that Vidya Balan would have done a much better job. I would have bet a million dollars 10 years back that Saif would never be a proper actor. I am so glad I did not make such bet. Saif did a great job in Omkara. I loved the Saathi re song, it was picturized really well and it has a lilting tune. Next on my list are Watching Cyrus and Dor. Any other movie recommendations?