Full Metal Jacket - Joker

Yeah Joker is a really lovable character, not a stereotyoe and i love it.

One of my favourite stills, the picture speaks a lot. I love this one, every face speaks volumes, look at the onlooker with his palm one on one, like monalisa, such dumb expression, totally out of sync with the tension between the other two, I love the way they are loaded with ammo and camera, the black guy in the corner, the way he has bent forward, even the specky in the corner of the frame.

The ciggies on the helmet ... The scribbling on the helmet


Another thing i even love the conversation, i love the way juggle it around, how the weight is thrown form one character to the other. In the screenplay book i was reading as part of my course, they had asked the writer to visualise these conversations as if the actors are separated by two sticks joined at palms, and by pushing the stick ahead you throw your weight, by relenting force you draw back. This physical energy should be perceivable from words.

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Sometimes even typing blanks used to be enough. He would make sense out of it. Its a friend gone, life has changed, i never really thought of it as that, what with this course and all, but today as i am going through old posts, freakily pasting them up on the Blog, i come across conversations .... which seems to have happened in childhood, its two eager kids planning to make max of the time together. I was going to Pune, and i had to meet few friends as well as old neighbours as well as both of us wanted to do allllll that we used to do.

Kid1: yaar i would reach there by 9 hopefully
Kid1: but Mennon home bhi jaane ko mangta ...
Kid1: Vohuman/matinee/Railway station is a must in the morning
Kid1: i second that
Kid1: though i am more keen on lonavala
Kid1: with Human Bondage ....
Kid2: !!
Kid2: Oh yes yes yes
Kid2: We have 2 mornings.
Kid2: So one morning can be lonavala.
Kid2: lonavala should be sunday morning so that instead of 9 we can move it up little early.
Kid2: say 7-8 ish. Better weather.
Kid2: Menon home can be a afternoon affair, the time where we cant roam outside
Kid2: And lonavala would be nice. We will get down at any of the station, roam around for an hour in the illage and hill.
Kid2: And get back again in the next train.. What say.

Sheesh being nostalgic is so sucky !!! I am feeling so moronic right now.

No offence, but i find these names quaint.

I don’t know in how may countries is this possible, that you keep moving from one region to another every three years or so for so many years and still be surprised by the quaintness of the names that you come across

Prabhu Boomibalagadoss – some guy who keeps postin stuff on common mailing list

Pugazendhi Panchatcharam – my lead

Jijo Baby – ( it took me days to believe it was his official registered lifelong name, and you could just wince any time somebody would call the poor guy by his sir name, for that matter anybody in his family) my co-cubiclee

Jayatheertha Achar Manchali – a help desk personnel

Need to keep moving.

I guess it bothers me to stay put at one place, it relly bothers , that’s why you have to keep moving, and there is no sense of belonging... :-). Not that I complain, you just have to get to know yourself I guess, you know whenever I have been on my roaming spree, I would notice there were a lot of people like me , a map or a book in hand, bag on shoulders, clicking here and there, noting down this and that in diary, and then these firangs , especially women who stand all the Indian eve teasing , the confusing trains, and still how much at home they seem to be traveling around, it really bothers you , you have to heed the call , and I guess though you don’t know anybody around you who does it, you might not see the logic in it, but once you get into it, you would immediately know, this is it, you don’t think of yourself as a weirdo anymore, you relax and are happy to be, and then it stops bothering you , and you just become more receptive to these calls, and I guess keep getting more and more fine tuned to what is that makes you the happiest...

The storyboard of forrked out :-D

We did a ten shot exercise a few days back, we were supposed to do it in pairs.I couldnt come up with a convincing story. My partner came with a story like this:

Girl waiting for boyfriend.
Boyfriend arrives, he is going to break up with her today, does not know how to say it.
Girl knows of it.
When the boy tells him, she says she already knows and she has a parting gift.
She brandishes a big bad knife and stabs him in broad daylight.

Well, my contribution to the theory was the fork, i said if she is already doing something wild, then lets make it with fork :-).

So instead of slitting his throat with a knife, our heartbroken femme fatale sneakily takes out a fork from her side and jams it in his hand. :-D

And so was produced the most hilarious 10 shots ever, i am still laughing at the thought of it.

Omkara re Omakara

Lovely Dobriyaal , I would say. His face , his expressions were a delight, he is so damn good, he can teach everybody a damn good acting lesson. What with bigies like Naseeruddin Shah doing every other role. I forget the last time Naseer enacted a character, he was so bound in Iqbaal as well. I just remember masoom, and all these Krish and every other forgettable role he does, helps me forget the magic of Masoom.

I don’t know why good acting is so rare in movies, it leaves you thirsty for a performance and every time one comes by I cling to the memory and impressions of it created by it in my head for as long as possible. Last I remember was Rajapal Yadav in Main meri Patni, I treasure Indian characters more as I identify naturally with them…

As for Devgan , nothing outstanding, but better than Apaharan , he was the sore point in Apaharan. Apaharan was more entertaining when I saw it, because of such fast paced entertaining reporting of those incidents in Bihar, but the characters not well sketched or well enacted, Ajay was flailing embarrassingly with his make do Bhojpuri, even Bipasha was better than him.

As for Saif, this is his best role ever, but I hope he doesn’t get a national award for this one cause he already got one where he didn’t deserve; for some candy floss.

Kareeena was good, not that she had much to do I guess, but for whatver she had , she did it considering that she is the POOOOO from Kabhi khushi …….., big diff, unrecognizable.

Vivek ya , as it is his role was supposed to be just another gullible idiot I guess, then i guess he can be forgiven.

But man is Saif lucky … lovely character, and he does it so well, the scene where he is swaying his palms in front of Raju, loveable character. You know we were told the protagonist is the one who moves the story forward, I think it is Saif in this case. If it weren’t to the beautiful establishment of this one character, everything would have collapsed, or become just another conniving villain aka Pran, Prem etc. Its true this movie is about Omakra, but very quietly Langda Tyagi shoulders Omakara’s onus.

Stuck in the middle with you!!!

Let me give you some Bangaloree news, Sonia is coming , the city has been made ugly with her manly looking huge cutouts all over, there is one big poster of her leaning her head on Rajiv’s shoulder on display as well , it seems so out of place, its like a photo from family living room flashed in streets. There were millions of people swarming the DD tower road yesterday, 110s of buses, thoushands of villagers, to cross a stretch which takes me 3 minutes max, took me an hour, an outstanding thing was there was a hawker selling samosas in buckets along the traffic, like they do when a train stops on a stations, all of us bangaloreans had formed a human train for him, which was more or less stationed there for half an hour. :-D

Incredible Bangalore !!!