N-Pop!

Gossip

2009-03-24T13:53:00.002+05:30

A woman was gossiping with her friend about a man whom they hardly knew - I know none of you have ever done this. That night, she had a dream: a great hand appeared over her and pointed down on her. She was immediately seized with an overwhelming sense of guilt. The next day she went to confession. She got the old parish priest, Father O' Rourke, and she told him the whole thing. 'Is gossiping a sin?' she asked the old man. 'Was that God All Mighty's hand pointing down at me? Should I ask for your absolution? Father, have I done something wrong?' 'Yes,' Father O' Rourke answered her. 'Yes, you ignorant, badly-brought-up female. You have blamed false witness on your neighbor. You played fast and loose with his reputation, and you should be heartily ashamed.' So, the woman said she was sorry, and asked for forgiveness. 'Not so fast,' says O' Rourke. 'I want you to go home, take a pillow upon your roof, cut it open with a knife, and return here to me.' So, the woman went home: took a pillow off her bed, a knife from the drawer, went up the fire escape to her roof, and stabbed the pillow. Then she went back to the old parish priest as instructed. 'Did you cut the pillow with a knife?' he says. 'Yes, Father.' 'And what were the results?' 'Feathers,' she said. 'Feathers?' he repeated. 'Feathers; everywhere, Father.' 'Now I want you to go back and gather up every last feather that flew out onto the wind,' 'Well,' she said, 'it can't be done. I don't know where they went. The wind took them all over.' 'And that,' said Father O' Rourke, 'is gossip!'

- Father Brendan Flynn, Doubt (2008)

This is such a fantastic scene from Doubt. You can watch it on youchoob here.

2008 - A Retrospect

2009-01-02T15:50:00.006+05:30

2008 was a great year as far as entertainment and intellectual stimulation was concerned. I had the good fortune of enjoying some awesome books and movies and tv shows. Here's a look back at the high points of the year for me.

TV Shows
I was lucky to see some outstanding tv shows this year. Although this is not a comprehensive list, I've tried to list out as many as I could remember.
1) Scrubs - Season 7
2) Numb3rs - Season 1
3) The Simpsons - Various Seasons
4) The Tudors - Season 1 & 2
5) Heroes - Season 1,2,3
6) The Sopranos - Season 1-6
7) 30 Rock - Season 1,2,3
8) Mad Men - Season 1
9) The Twilight Zone - Random Episodes

I'd been watching Scrubs for the last three years and Season 7 was as much fun as the rest. Numb3rs first season was pretty impressive. I'm a big fan of The Simpsons, so I'm not gonna say much. The always kick butt. Homer's the man!
The Tudors was well produced with great sets and costumes capturing the Tudor era very well, but the storyline was very melodramatic. The only thing that kept me hooked was King Henry's sexploits! Heroes was the biggest disappointment of the year for me as far as tv shows are concerned. Remove Hiro Nakamura and you can shut down that show. The Sopranos. Ah... THE SOPRANOS! Now that's something. No no. That's THE thing! The best television drama ever made. It is simply outstanding. If you've not seen The Sopranos, you've missed something good in life. 30 Rock was the surprise hit of the year for me! I totally fell in love with all the dysfunctional characters in that show. Tina Fey, Tracy Morgan and Alec Baldwin are amazingly funny. 30 Rock was my daily dose of cheer for a whole month. Mad Men's another latest television show that created quite a stir with it's authentic 60's look and the interesting bunch of characters belonging to an ad agency on Madison Avenue.
Although The Sopranos is the best tv show I saw this year, The Twilight Zone is what I'm gonna vote for. This was created in 1959. A half hour, black and white, science fiction show. Rod Serling redefined television viewing with his simple, gripping plot lines and that mesmerizingly stylish narration! Almost every episode is available on youchoob. Go watch as many as you can. I can assure you, it'd be the best spent half hour of the day.

Movies
I saw a whole lotta movies this year. But I'd started keeping track of them only around May so this list below is incomplete. And I'm not including the regional movies in this list. Simply because I don't remember how many of those I saw. Most of them don't deserve a mention is another story altogether.

Midnight Cowboy #

Across the Universe

Ocean's Eleven

Juno #

Persepolis

Sex and the City

Brick #

Do the right thing #

Atonement

Batman - Gotham Knight

Graduate

Donnie darko

About a Boy

Death at a funeral

Perfume: The story of a murderer

No Country for Old Men

Sleuth (1972)

Sleuth (2007)

In Bruges #

Bring me the head of alfredo garcia

The Orphanage #

My Blueberry Nights #

Blood Diamond #

YPF

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

The Lookout

The Holiday

Redbelt

Superbad

Vision of Light

The Naked City (1948) #

Interview

Eternal Sunshine #

Ghost World

There Will be Blood #

The English Patient

The Lives of Others #

The Wild Bunch

Saving Pvt Ryan #

My Own Private Idaho

World's Fastest Indian

Spiderman 3

The Doors

Polar Express

Shakespeare Wallah

WALL-E #

Burn After Reading

Iron Man

Thank You for Smoking #

Ed Wood

Saving Pvt Ryan #

Kung-fu Panda

Speed Racer

Last Tango in Paris

Philadelphia

Snow Angels

Stranger Than Paradise

Pickpocket

Dancer in the dark

Flashbacks of a Fool

The Fall (2006) #

Casino Royale

Quantum of Solace

Be Kind Rewind

Horton hears a Who!

Pineapple Express

Breakfast Club

Boy A #

The Blue Umbrella

Cloverfield

Knocked Up #

Mongol #

The Darjeeling Limited

Chop Shop

The Great Debaters #

Michael Clayton

My Winnipeg

A Complete History Of My Sexual Failures

Tropic Thunder

Slumdog Millionaire

I'm Not There.

---------------

That's the list. I liked almost all the movies I saw this year. Mainly because I downloaded most of them myself and I chose to get only those that had good reviews. There were a few i like more than the others. Those are maked with a hash symbol next to them #.

There were three special movie watching experiences that I enjoyed more.

The Dark Knight
This was a movie I'd been looking forward to and I managed to catch it in the theatres. I saw it twice. And was completely blown away both the times. I've been spouting The Joker's lines ever since. But my fav line of the movie is Morgan Freeman's! "Like a submarine, Mr. Wayne. Like a submarine." :)

The films of Akira Kurosawa
I dint add these to the list partly because I'd seen some of them already and partly because I wanted to write a li'l bit in detail about it. This was a particularly enlightening film watching experience. I'd got hold of a two books - Something Like an Autobiography by Akira Kurosawa and The Emperor and the Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune by Stuart Galbraith IV. I read both of them and simultaneously watched all the films of Kurosawa starting from The Drunken Angel (1949) to Ran (1985) over a period of one week. I had also downloaded the Criterion Collection Extras of some of his better known films, a series titled Akira Kurosawa - It's Wonderful to Create.
This is something I'll cherish for long, to read about the Emperor and watch his films and get interesting insights into the works of one of the best filmmakers. It was so much fun to learn what an obsessive perfectionist he was.
I'd already seen Seven Samurai twice and I think it's definitely one of the greatest film ever made. After seeing High and Low (1963) I am now convinced that it matches Seven Samurai. The screenplay and the way he handled the subject was just great and I'm still in awe of the movie. High and Low (1963) IS the best film I saw in 2008.

Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!
This was another super fun film watching experience. A friend of mine and I bought ten rupee tickets at Inox and saw this superbly crafted, hilarious movie by Dibakar Banerjee sitting in the first row! Wow. What an awesome movie. We were rolling on the floor laughing our asses off! And the best part was there was noone else sitting in the first row! It was almost like a private scrrening exclusively for us. This is one of the good films to come out of India this year. This decade actually.

Books

I read a good number of books this year thanks to Shelfari and the 50 book challenge community. In fact, I managed to read a 100 books. Plus I'd discovered the world of Graphic Novels only this ear and I went mad downloading and reading some of the best works. My total tally read thus:
58 comics/GNs including 5 big series
42 Novels including 18 Indian works

Here's the list in chronological order.

1) Tuesdays with Morrie - Mitch Albom
2) One Hundred years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez #
3) The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
4) Second Turn ( Rendamoozham) - M.T. Vasudevan Nair #
5) Oliver story - Erich Segal
6) Today (Indru) - Asokamitran
7) Three uses of the Knife - David Mamet
8) A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
9) Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez #
10) Katha Prize Short Stories Vol 1 - (Rimli Bhattacharya & Geeta Dharmarajan)
11) Waterness (Neermai) - Na muthuswamy #
12) Memories of my Melancholy Whores - Marquez
13) Surrendered Dreams - Indhumathi
14) Temple Elephant - P S Sri
15) Twice Born - Vijay Raghavan
16) Into the heaven of freedom - Indira Parthsarathy
17) Fire and Rain - Girish Karnad #
18) Persepolis 1 & 2 (Graphic Novel) - Marjane Satrapi #
19) Blankets - Craig Thompson #
20) Batman - The Killing Joke - Allan Moore & Brian Bolland
21) Ghost World - Daniel Clowes
22) Maus I & II - Art Spiegelman
23) Fortune and Glory - Brian Michael Bendis #
24) Pride of Baghdad - Brian K Vaughan
25) Bridges - Sivasankari
26) Barabbas - Par Lagerkvist #
27) Bone (Vol 1 - Out from Boneville) - Jeff Smith
28) Sleepwalk: and Other stories - Adrian Tomine #
29) Summer Blonde - Adrian Tomine
30) Shortcomings - Adrian Tomine
31) 3 Mistakes of my Life - Chetan Bhagat
32) David Boring - Dan Clowes
33) A Sort of Homecoming - Damon Hurd, Pedro Camello
34) Cartoon History of the Universe Vol 1 - Larry Gonick
35) The Poor Bastard - Joe Matt #
36) Ghostwritten - David Mitchell
37) The Pregnant King - Devdutt Pattanaik #
38) Fair Weather - Joe Matt
39) Torso - Brian Michael Bendis, Marc Andreyko
40) Spent - Joe Matt
41) About a Boy - Nick Hornby #
42) Perfume: The story of a Murderer - Patrick Suskind
43) Batman: Year One - Frank Miller, David Mazzucchelli #
44) Batman - The Dark Knight Returns - Frank Miller
45) Goodbye, Chunky Rice - Craig Thompson
46) Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck #
47) I Never Liked You - Chester Brown
48) Sloth - Gilbert Hernandez
49) Batman: The Long Halloween - Jeff Loeb, Tim Sale
50) Bone Volume 2: The Great Cow Race - Jeff Smith
51) The Golem's Mighty Swing - James Sturm. #
52) Watchmen - Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons #
53) 300 - Frank Miller, Lynn Varley
54) Kanthapura - Raja Rao
55) Love Fights Vol I - Andi Watson
56) Batman: The Cult - Jim Starlin
57) Love and Longing in Bombay - Vikram Chandra #
58) Batman: Arkham Asylum (A Serious Place on Serious Eearth) - Grant Morrison, Dave McKean.
59) By the Sea (Kadalpurathil) - Vanna Nilavan
60) Carnet de Voyage - Craig Thompson
61) Y: The Last Man (Issues 1 - 60) - Brian K Vaughan, Pia Guerra #
62) A Complete Lowlife - Ed Brubaker #
63) Wanted - Mark Millar
64) Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
65) Alias 1-28 - Brian Michael Bendis, Michael Gaydos
66) The Pulse (14 issues) - Brian Michael Bendis
67) Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art - Scott McCloud #
68) Red Earth and Pouring Rain - Vikram Chandra #
69) Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic - Alison Bechdel
70) The Dreamer - Will Eisner
71) Houdini: The Handcuff King - Jason Lutes, Nick Bertozzi
72) Exile and the Kingdom - Albert Camus
73) In Cold Blood - Truman Capote #
74) Fell 1-9 - Warren Ellis
75) Whiteout - Greg Rucka, Steve Lieber
76) Whiteout: Melt - Greg Rucka, Steve Lieber
77) One Bad day - Steve Rolston
78) That Salty Air - Tim Sievert
79) Embroideries - Marjane Satrapi
80) Arrival - Shaun Tan
81) Something like an Autobiography - Akira Kurosawa #
82) On Directing Film - David Mamet
83) Preacher (1-66 + 6specials) - Garth Ennis, Steve Dillon. #
84) Complete Adventures of Feluda II - Satyajit Ray (trans - Gopa Majumdar) #
85) Omerta - Mario Puzo.
86) Maigret and the Reluctant Witnesses - Georges Simenon
87) Mother Courage and her Children - Bertolt Brecht #
88) Stuck Rubber Baby - Howard Cruse
89) Originals - Dave Gibbons
90) Batman: Dark Victory - Jeph Loeb, Tim Sale
91) The Book of Lost Souls 1-6 - Michael J. Straczynski
92) The fall - Jason Lutes, Ed Brubaker
93) Scene of the Crime - Ed Brubaker #
94) Bone (The complete series 1-55 including specials) - Jeff Smith
95) Lone Wolf and Cub Vol I The Assassin's Road - Koike & Kojima
96) Lone Wolf and Cub Vol II The Gateless Barrier - Koike & Kojima
97) Chasing Rainbows in Chennai: The Madras Diaries - Colin Todhunter
98) The Thin Man - Dashiell Hammett #
99) Interpreter of Maladies - Jhumpa Lahiri #
100) Purple Sea - Ambai

Again, I liked most of the books I read this year. Some were downright bad but they were few and far apart. The ones I liked better are marked with a #
I also had to make a list of ten best books I read this year for the 50 book challenge community. In no particular order,
Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Pregnant King - Devdutt Pattanaik
Second Turn - M.T. Vasudevan Nair
About a Boy - Nick Hornby
Something like an Autobiography - Akira Kurosawa
Watchmen - Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons
Blankets - Craig Thompson
Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi
Y: The Last Man - Brian K Vaughan, Pia Guerra
I Never Liked You - Chester Brown

Special mention/Jury award/ People's Choice award - Brian Michael Bendis.
He is, by far, the most entertaining writer I've read this year.

I did write brief reviews as and when i finished these books. You could take a look at those at http://www.shelfari.com/groups/10773/discussions/21065/Naresh---2008-List

Short Stories
I also want to list out some of the best short stories I read this year. Although most of them figure in the list above, some of my favs don't. Hence the separate list. But this is mostly off the top of my head.
Interpreter of Maladies & A Temporary Matter - Jhumpa Lahiri.
Patol Babu, Film Star & Bhuto - Satyajit Ray.
Kama (featured in Love and Longing in Bombay) - Vikram Chandra
Neermai (Waterness) & Battlefield (PadukaLam) - Na Muthuswamy
The Pomegranate Lady and her sons & Shemiran Bus - Goli Taraghi
Bomb Scare, The Connecting Thread & Hawaiian Getaway (Optic Nerve) - Adrian Tomine
Houdini: The Handcuff King - Jason Lutes, Nick Bertozzi

Of these, Bomb Scare, PadukaLam, Kama and The Pomegrante Lady totally blew me away! And I'll always remember Patol Babu.

I discovered a treasure trove of short stories from around the world at http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/ which I visit often when I am in the mood for a nice piece of short fiction.

Well, that's about it.
Super year, No? :)

Women beyond borders

2008-12-01T11:15:00.007+05:30

In all the books I've ever read, I've encountered only a handful of women writers. And I like all their works. I'm a big fan of Dame Agatha Christie and her outstanding oeuvre of mysteries. I remember liking Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies and Kiran Desai's Inheritence of Loss (which I'd to read for a course). I thought Shakespeare Wallah (screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, a booker winner) and Hiroshima Mon Amour (written by Marguerite Duras) were superbly written.

I had the good fortune of getting to know someone who heads a publishing house specializing in translated Indian fiction. Thus, I could read some very good Tamil writers' works - A Home in the Sky by Vaasanthi, Surrendered Dreams by Indhumathi and my favorite - Bridges by Sivasankari. That apart, I have read a few short stories at bookstores like Landmark and Crossword where I've chanced upon works by Ambai (what powerful writing!) and Kamala Das.
I've taken to poetry only recently and I like poems of 'Nikki' Giovanni. And some of the poems of two of my friends. They write brilliant stuff. It's just that they're read by a very select, privileged few.
Thanks to my brief romance with the theatre I got to learn and study short stories of Ismat Chughtai. Wow. She's a great storyteller. Her writing has so much flavor! And for another play, we were picking stories by Iranian women and that's when i came across Goli Taraghi. This post is mostly about her works.

About Goli Taraghi
Goli Taraghi is an Iranian prize-winning short story writer and novelist. She began her writing career with a collection of short stories entitled I Am Che Guevara Too in 1969. Her first novel, Winter Sleep, was published in 1973 and has been translated into English and French. She has also written scripts for two major Iranian films, Pear Tree and Bita. Taraghi lives in Tehran and Paris.

Goli Taraghi is, i think, someone who writes from deep within. Her works are always refreshing and powerful. Her stories are populated with desperate people who lead lonely lives suffused with fear. She is a very 'visual' writer. Her images are vivid and compelling enough to challenge and surprise anyone unfamiliar with Iranian life and literature. She has a very unique style of writing which is straightforward in it's narration and convincing and realistic in it's character development and portrayal. Most of her works are autobiographical. Loneliness, Estrangement, and a sense of displaced detachment form central themes in many of her stories.
I've found translations of some of her stories online. These come highly recommended.

'The Shemiran Bus', told from the viewpoint of a young girl, reflects the agonizing uncertainties, obsessions, and intertwining of new, conflicting feelings and urges characteristic of early adolescence. This is a very cute story. You cannot not be touched by it. And she paints such a pretty picture of life in Iran from the little girl's perspective.

In 'The Encounter',a social party for the author turns into an encounter with a 'nemesis' from a long forgotten past.

'The Neighbor' is an interesting story about the interactions between an annoyed neighbor and the author.

'The First Day' chronicles the struggles of the author in a psychiatric clinic. It beautiful captures the striking contrast between the author's past and her present condition.

'The Pomegranate Lady and her Sons' is about a chance encounter of the author with an old lady in an airport that turns into a poignant, larger than life drama. This is my favorite of the lot. It'll probably stay with you long after you read the story.
It is an absolute must read.

All these stories are from Words Without Borders, an online Magazine for International Literature. It features some of the best works from around the world. If you find yourself with lots of time, then i suggest you check out this website. It is worth your time to read it from end to end. You'll love every minute of it.

All the above stories are mirrored in esnips.

While we're talking about Iranian writing and women, it is mandatory that I add links to a great writer and artist who hails from Iran - Marjane Satrapi.

She's become very well known for her highly acclaimed work, Persepolis. It is a wonderful read and has been made into an animation film (As expected it doesn't compare to the experience of reading the GN)

Rapidshare download link - http://rapidshare.com/files/82412699/Persepolis.rar

She's also penned Embrioderies, which captures a post lunch gossip session of women and tells us lots of things we might not know about the lives of Iranian women and their sex lives. It's a thoroughly enjoyable read!

Mediafire download link - Embroideries (2005) (Minutemen-DTs).cbz

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?jdbdv9dge2m

Batman!

2008-11-20T10:29:00.005+05:30

I'd taken to Batman much before Dark Knight (2008) and Heath Ledger's Joker happened. Ofcourse, I owe it to Chris Nolan and his superb vision in Batman Begins (2005) which re-kindled my interest in the Dark Knight who was only a campy comedian in my memory thanks to the TV series and to an extent thanks to Clooney's trippy Batman! Chris Nolan gave us Batman as he was originally conceptualised & featured way back in 1939 in Detective Comics - the dark, flawed hero who is struggling to come to terms with his parents' death by fighting an eternal battle against crime.

I was fortunate enough to have laid my hands on some of the best Batman comics and GNs in the past year. Listed below are my top five favorites.

1) Batman: Year One

Frank Miller's stunning re-adaptation of the origins of Batman (and that of Jim Gordon, Harvey Dent, Cat Girl etc) was the major inspiration for Chris Nolan's Batman Begins. The art-work is reminiscent of the Golden Age of comics. The story is gripping. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say Frank Miller gave a new lease of life to Batman.

Download Links

Mirror 1: http://www.mediafire.com/?fxmjg0ym3v2

Mirror 2: http://www.zshare.net/download/4186503e097925/

2) Batman - The Dark Knight Returns

And this is how Frank Miller did it. He revived Batman and created a revolution in comics story telling with TDKR. This along with Watchmen (by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons) redefined the superhero genre in 1986(-87)! So much so that almost every Batman comic ever written after that portrays Batman as a dark, obsessive figure. And this influence extended to other superheroes as well. Dark became the new Black.

TDKR is set ten years after the retirement of Bruce Wayne from being Batman and the death of Robin, Jason Todd. He's become an alcoholic. The crime scene at Gotham city becomes overwhelming that he's forced to don his costume again. And here's where the plot gets interesting. The re-emergence of Batman seems to have lead to an increase in the crimes in the city. This is debated at length in the GN. Anyone claiming to be a Batman fan can do so only after he/she has read this landmark comic, a masterpiece in storytelling.

Download Link - http://www.megaupload.com/?d=7o0ooasb

3) Batman - The Killing Joke

This is the only other time Alan Moore, the godfather of American comics, ever wrote a Batman script (in 1988). And he created something legendary and highly influential like every other creation of his. The Killing Joke is mainly about the psychological battle between two of the darkest forces in comics - Batman and The Joker. It also recounts the origins of The Joker. Tim Burton and Chris Nolan have credited The Killing Joke as the main inspiration for their Batman adaptations. Heath Ledger locked himself up in a room with a few comics as part of his preparation for The Joker's role. The Killing Joke was one of the books he read extensively.

The other important theme that's explored in this one-shot is that Batman is probably as insane as the criminals he fights.

Download Link - http://www.zshare.net/download/4192837d4482d3/

4) Batman: The Long Halloween

This is a 13 issue series by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale published in 1996-97. This takes off from where Batman: Year One left. Batman encounters a mysterious killer, Holiday who murders people on, you guessed it right, holidays. This series includes a long list of villains, including Two Face (and his origins). The Dark Knight (2008) film is loosely based on this. It's a thrilling read that keeps you guessing till the end.

Download Links

http://rapidshare.com/files/6740596/Batman_-_The_Long_Halloween_A.zip.html
http://rapidshare.com/files/6745782/Batman_-_The_Long_Halloween_B.zip.html
Mirror 2 - http://www.megaupload.com/?d=SQXEG6FT

5) Batman: Dark Victory
This is a 14 part series by the same team as above and serves like a sequel to The Long Halloween. The plot revolves around a series of cop murders by another mysterious killer, The Hangman. This also deals with the origins of the first Robin. It explores in depth the psychological make up of Batman and dwells on his loneliness. You don't want to miss out on this one.

Download Links - http://mihd.net/b3sx2t

The Three Bells

2008-09-21T20:54:00.003+05:30

The Browns were a family of musicians - Jim Ed Brown, Maxine Brown and Bonnie Brown who were small time country music singers performing at rural venues until 1950's. Then The Three Bells happened which became a no. 1 hit and resulted in them appearing on the Ed Sullivan show and made them international.

Based on a 1945 French song "Les trois cloches" by Jean Villard and Marc Herrand, it chronicles the life of this fello Jimmy Brown - the three most important moments in his life - Birth, Marriage and Death. It's a lovely little song, with the "bomm bomm bomm" ringing in your head long after the song stops playing. There's minimal instrumentation used which sort of adds to the religious mystical effect of this song.

It was put to good use in The Sopranos. It appeared in two episodes early in the sixth season. Yeah I know, that's where I'm discovering all these really nice songs.

Lyrics

There's a village
Hiidden deep in the valley
Among the pine trees half forlorn
And there on a sunny morning
Little Jimmy Brown was born.

(boom, boom, boom, boom...)

All the chapel bells are ringing
In the little valley town
And the song that they were singing
Was for baby Jimmy Brown
And the little congregation
Prayed for guidance from above:
"Lead us not into temptation
Bless this hour of meditation

Guide him with eternal love"

There's a village
Hidden deep in the valley
Beneath the mountains high above
And there, 20 years thereafter,
Jimmy was to meet his love.

(boom, boom, boom, boom...)

All the chapel bells were ringing
'Twas a great day in his life
'Cause the songs that they were singing
Were for Jimmy and his wife
Then the little congregation
Prayed for guidance from above:
"Lead us not into temptation
Bless, O Lord, this celebration
May their lives be filled with love."

From the village,
Hidden deep in the valley
One rainy morning dark and gray
A soul winged its way to heaven.
Jimmy Brown had passed away.

(boom, boom, boom, boom....)

Just a lonely bell was ringing
In the little valley town
'Twas farewell that it was singing
To our good old Jimmy Brown
(Little Jimmy Brown)
And the little congregation
Prayed for guidance from above:
"Lead us not into temptation
May his soul find this salvation
Of a great eternal love"

This song is still the best song by The Browns, who split up and went on to pursue solo careers. Jim Ed Brown hosts radio shows playing country music and is an active member of Grand Ole Opry this weekly country music radio program which has been around since 1925!

Download the song @ mediafire

The Browns - The Three Bells (Les Trois Cloches) / 320kbps CBR MP3 / 6.46MB
http://www.mediafire.com/?9eabe2mxx1j

(The pic of The Browns with Elvis was taken at the Trio Club in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, December 15, 1956.)

2008-09-21T13:49:00.002+05:30

Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, and all the while a great wind carries me across the sky.

- Ojibwe saying

From The Sopranos, Season 6, Episode 3 - Mayham

Our Father in Heaven

2008-09-21T12:03:00.003+05:30

The Lord's prayer has fascinated me ever since i came across it in a small prayer hall with a painting of a child looking into the skies.

Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,

But deliver us from evil.
[For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.]

And today, I came across a "different" version of it in an episode of the Sopranos (6th season, 2nd episode - Join the Club) written by Jacques Prévert, a French poet and screenwriter. He says,

Our Father who art in heaven
Stay there
And we'll stay here on earth
Which is sometimes so pretty

Here's the whole poem

Pater noster
Our Father who art in heaven
Stay there
And we'll stay here on earth
Which is sometimes so pretty
With its mysteries of New York
And its mysteries of Paris
At least as good as that of the Trinity
With its little canal at Ourcq
Its great wall of China
Its river at Morlaix
Its candy canes
With its Pacific Ocean
And its two basins in the Tuileries
With its good children and bad people
With all the wonders of the world
Which are here
Simply on the earth
Offered to everyone
Strewn about
Wondering at the wonder of themselves
And daring not avow it
As a naked pretty girl dares not show herself
With the world's outrageous misfortunes
Which are legion
With legionaries
With torturers
With the masters of this world
The masters with their priests their traitors and their troops
With the seasons
With the years
With the pretty girls and with the old bastards
With the straw of misery rotting in the steel of cannons.

And here's a poem that i stumbled onto as i was looking up Jacques Prévert. Incidentally, he wrote the screenplay for The Children of Paradise (1945).

Alicante
Une orange sur la table
Ta robe sur le tapis
Et toi dans mon lit
Doux présent du présent
Fraîcheur de la nuit
Chaleur de ma vie.

Translation
An orange on the table
Your dress on the carpet
And you on my bed
A delicate present of the present
The coolness of night
The warmth of my life.

Wonderful, aint it?

There's more where these came from -

http://www.otago.ac.nz/DeepSouth/vol3no1/campbell.html

http://xtream.online.fr/Prevert/indexeng.html

If I Were a Carpenter

2008-09-18T21:39:00.004+05:30

New found love. This appeared at the end credits of The Sopranos 61st episode (9th episode, 5th season) - Unidentified Black Males.

Bobby Darin's cover of Tim Hardin's hit, If I Were a Carpenter.

It's simple. And beautiful.

Lyrics

If I were a carpenter
And you were a lady
Would you marry me anyway
Would you have my baby

If a tinker were my trade
Would you still find me
Carrying the pots I'd made
Following behind me

Save my love through loneliness
Save my love for sorrows
I've given you my onliness
Come give me your tomorrows

If I worked my hands in wood
Would you still love me
Answer me babe yes I would
I'll put you above me

If I were a miller
At a mill wheel grinding
Would you miss your colored blouse
Your soft shoe shining

If I were a carpenter
And you were a lady
Would you marry me anyway
Would you have my baby

Would you marry me anyway
And have my babyyyyyyyyyy

Download mp3 @ mediafire
Bobby Darin - If I Were A Carpenter / 229kbps V0(VBR) MP3 / 3.92MB
http://www.mediafire.com/?mz0mmgzendc

Watch Robert Plant do a live cover of this song for some mtv show on youchoob - http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=xVM7itZ-eGs

The Handcuff King

2008-09-17T08:41:00.007+05:30

Houdini: The Handcuff King
Writer: Jason Lutes
Artist: Nick Bertozzi
Hardcover: 96 pages
Publisher: Hyperion Book CH (March 27, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0786839023
ISBN-13: 978-0786839025

We've all heard of the man. Houdini, today, is synonymous with magic and acts of daredevil stunts. There is something fascinating about him that draws people to read/write about him with a compulsion bordering on obsession. It is probably his ability to do superhuman acts. Or it is probably his romance with success that lasted a lifetime and more. His publicity stunts. His determination in and the dedication to whatever he took up that he was determined to be nothing short of a "king" in his field of expertise. His audacity to proclaim himself to be the greatest magician on earth. And proving himself right.

If you were a rival of his, and made the mistake of declaring yourself a "Handcuff King", Houdini might show up at your performance and put you into a set of cuffs from which you couldn't escape, ending your career.

Houdini: The Handcuff King is a short graphic novel. It takes more time to read the introduction and the panel discussions in the end than to read the actual story. The authors explores the life of the man with a single episode in his life - Houdini leaps off a bridge into the freezing waters of Charles river, handcuffed and chained! Thru this death defying stunt we get to know a lot about his life and the times he lived in. His showmanship, his skill of the craft, the love he had for his wife and also about a world before the advent of radio, cinema, television, internet, a world of thrill and possibilities.

image flicked from tsutpen.blogspot.com

In Houdini's times, there was not many forms of public entertainment. There was, as already stated above, no tv or movies. People had to go watch a play or a comedy show to get their regular dose of drama or laughs. Magicians were the main soource of thrills. Houdini realised this fully well, and capitalised on it. It is amazing to read about this short, stocky man who held thousands spellbound as he gave them "honest" delight.

The Handcuff King is a fast paced read. The simple panels, the straightforward narrative, the expressions on the faces, everything works in this GN. The success of this little book is in making you hear the clock tick as Houdini takes the plunge.

One or two interesting things that i learnt about Houdini:
1) Born Erik Weisz, he began calling himself Harry Houdini because he was a huge fan of Robert-Houdin, the French magician. He read his auto-bio and was totally impressed by him. But later, he lost his respect for him and went on to criticize him heavily for taking undue credit for other magicians' innovations. He even wrote a book titled - The Unmasking of Robert Houdin in 1908.

2) After the death of his mother, he spent a lot of time debunking spiritualists. He became a member of Scientific American, and went around attending seances in disguise to expose them.

3) He was close friends with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but Houdini's stance on spiritualism (of which Conan Doyle was a firm believer) proved to be the cause for a public rivalry.

Read the first ten pages at http://www.nickbertozzi.com/comics/houdini/houdini.htm

Download GN at http://rapidshare.com/files/65065767/Houdini_-_The_Handcuff_King__2007___Minutemen-DTs_.cbz - 35617 KB

Fascinated by the man, I was reading the Wiki article top to bottom and discovered an interesting piece of trivia!

X's father owned a traveling show with Harry Houdini called the Mohawk Indian Medicine Company, which performed on stage and sold patent medicine on the side. According to X, he acquired the nickname "______" at about six months of age. Harry Houdini happened to be present one day when the young X took a tumble down a long flight of stairs without injury. After the infant sat up and shook off his experience, Houdini remarked, "That was a real _______!" According to X, in those days, the word _______ was used to refer to a spill or a fall that had the potential to produce injury. Thereafter, it was X's father who began to use the nickname to refer to the youngster.
Who's X and what is the nickname that he's known by??

Anyway, do read the novel and the whole wiki article!

Woke up this mornin'

2008-09-15T20:11:00.005+05:30

And watched a few episodes of The Sopranos.

Been doin this for weeks now. Always wanted to watch this TV show, never had an opportunity.

Finally got down to downloading it and have finished seeing four seasons. I'd definitely agree with all those who say this is probably the best tv series made till date. The Sopranos team has taken the basic set up of a gangster family and a mob boss and explored it to the fullest! Anyway this is not about the show itself but about its soundtracks.

They'd some really cool colleciton of soundtracks! But my fav is the title track - Woke up this morning by Alabama 3.

The Lyrics

You woke up this morning
Got yourself a gun,
Mama always said you'd be
The Chosen One.

She said: You're one in a million
You've got to burn to shine,
But you were born under a bad sign,
With a blue moon in your eyes.

You woke up this morning
All the love has gone,
Your Papa never told you
About right and wrong.

But you're looking good, baby,
I believe you're feeling fine, (shame about it),
Born under a bad sign
With a blue moon in your eyes.

You woke up this morning
The world turned upside down,
Thing's ain't been the same
Since the Blues walked into town.

But you're one in a million
You've got that shotgun shine.
Born under a bad sign,
With a blue moon in your eyes.

When you woke up this morning everything you had was
gone. By half past ten your head was going ding-dong.
Ringing like a bell from your head down to your toes,
like a voice telling you there was something you should
know. Last night you were flying but today you're so low
- ain't it times like these that make you wonder if
you'll ever know the meaning of things as they appear to
the others; wives, mothers, fathers, sisters and
brothers. Don't you wish you didn't function, wish you
didn't think beyond the next paycheck and the next little
drink' Well you do so make up your mind to go on, 'cos
when you woke up this morning everything you had was gone.

When you woke up this morning,
When you woke up this morning,
When you woke up this morning,
Mama said you'd be the Chosen One.

When you woke up this morning,
When you woke up this morning,
When you woke up this morning,
You got yourself a gun.

Download mp3

Woke up this morning - Alabama 3 - http://www.zshare.net/audio/2472260ad77c71/

Woke up this mornin (chosen one mix) Alabama 3 - http://rapidshare.com/files/3224648/A_3_-_Woke_Up_This_Morning___Chosen_One_Mix__.rar

The English Patient

2008-09-15T16:09:00.002+05:30

The desert inspires a mixture of awe and fear with its expansive nothingness. The sun scorches into our hearts and minds the story of The English Patient. The music score transports us to a far of time and place. The non linear narrative has the magical grip on us inspite of its 40 plus time transitions.

I loved this movie. The picturisation was wonderful. Juliet Binoche deserved that oscar just for the serenity in her eyes and that kindness in her smile. Naveen Andrews' Kip is one of the best portrayals on Indians in English cinema that i've come across.

Apart from the last scene there were two that i'll carry with me for sometime.

1) The lamps lit all around the church leading towards the bunk at the backyard and the "viewing" of the paintings - very romantic! 2) The run in the rain. That put a smile on my face. It will, on yours too.

Herodotus, apart from being a historian was a master storyteller.

Dil Ki Daastaan

2008-09-15T08:45:00.012+05:30

Jaal (1952)
Starring - Dev Anand, Geeta Bali
Direction - Guru Dutt
Music - SD Burman
Lyrics - Sahir Ludhianvi

Singer - Hemant Kumar

Discovered this wonderful song only recently, and fell in love with it instantly. "Come, listen to the story of my heart", croons Hemant Kumar as Dev Anand pretends to strum a guitar. Geeta Bali looks at him longingly, but a restrained doubt is visible in her eyes. Framed against the night sky, the trees sway in tune to this melodious number. The humming and the simple music evocates the mood of the Goan fisherfolk community.

But the credit for the success of this song goes to Hemant Kumar and the lyricist, Sahir Ludhianvi. I wouldn't be exaggerating if I said that it is the voice of Hemant that's given this song its eternal life.

Check out the video of this song on youchoob - http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=WRfVXUk9kFw

The lyrics in Hindi

Download, Listen to the song here - http://www.radioreloaded.com/tracks/?17974

Transliteration In English

Ha, ha ha ha ha ha, ha ha

Yeh raat yeh chaandni phir kahaan, sun jaa dil ki daastaan -2

Hm hm hm, hm hm hm

Hey pedo ki shaakhon pe

Pedo ki shaakhon pe soyi soyi chaandni, pedo ki shaakhon pe

Tere khayaalon mein khoyi khoyi chaandni

Aur thodi der mein thak ke laut jaayegi

Raat yeh bahar ki phir kabhi na aayegi

Do ek pal aur hai yeh samaa, sun ja dil ki daastaan

Hm hm hm, hm hm hm

Hey lehron ke hontho pe

Lehron ke hontho pe dheema dheema raag hai, lehron ke hontho pe

Bheegi hawaaon mein thandi thandhi aag hai

Is haseen aag mein tu bhi jalke dekhle

Zindagi ke geet ki dhun badal ke dekhle

Khulne de ab dhadkano ki zubaan, sun ja dil ki daastaan

Hey jaati bahaare hain

Jaati bahaare hain uthti jawaaniyan, jaati bahaare hain

Taaron ke chaaon mein pehle kahaaniyaan

(Ek baar chal diye gar tujhe pukaarke

Lautkar na aayenge qaafilen bahaar ke) -2

Aaja abhi zindagi hai jawaan, sun ja dil ki daastaan

Yeh raat yeh chaandni phir kahaan, sun jaa dil ki daastaan

Daastaan, daastaan

The information about the movie was borrowed from here. It also has an interesting review, songs info and excerpts from the reviews published in 1952.

Beginings

2008-09-14T23:55:00.001+05:30

Routine stuff - Entertainment, Music, Movies, Books, Comics, Internet etc. You know, Pop Culture!

This is a record of stuff i like (and dislike) about the world around me. Views and opinions expressed here are most definitely mine (I might sometimes borrow from elsewhere), atleast momentarily, till i change my mind. Oh, and I don't care for yours. If you heard me say I did, I was probably trying to get into your pants.