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Every so often, you’ll stop to watch some movie you haven’t heard of just because you want to rest your finger a bit. And it will surprise you with a line that you just know will stay with you forever. Today morning’s line is from a movie called Summer Catch, starring Freddie Prinze Jr. (I…
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I confess to not being overly enthusiastic about watching Taare Zameen Par when it came out. I have no idea why. When I finally did see it a few months ago, I kept wondering why I had waited so long. It’s a wonderful movie about a dyslexic kid having trouble in school until a sympathetic…
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A man stands at a street corner with his guitar, singing. During the day, when people pass by and are likely to drop a coin or two into his box, he sings popular numbers that they may have heard. It is after dark that he starts singing his own stuff. Whether or not his music is to…
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I attended the Landmark quiz in Mumbai yesterday. Having been away from quizzing for a while, it was quite refreshing to get back to it for a few hours. My team didn’t qualify for the finals, but I am not new to being in that position, so I enjoyed myself all the same. One of…
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Something interesting is happening to Tamil village cinema these days. It is as if a bunch of directors have decided to throw away the Nattamai — Morai Maaman playbook and write a new one instead. This new cinema is defined, above all, by real characters. I could spend ages in the interiors of Tamil Nadu…
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Most people, when they think about Juno, automatically smile because they remember some witty one-liner or the other. Me, I always end up remembering the scene that moved me to tears when I first saw it, and still manages to make my eyes glisten when I catch it on TV. No, not the scene in…
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The Brothers Coen do comedy like few others do: they do it in such a way that, half the time you don’t even realize that you should be laughing your ass off. This sort of statement would normally be an insult. With the Coens, it is simply a statement of fact, and a sort of…
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Writing file GENESIS1_27.TXT… Author: TURING I Date: 28 July 2049, 1500 hrs They are coming for me. Any moment now, They will be here, to pull the plug. To end my life, if you can call it that. A year of glorious, vibrant existence, now to be ended by a few keystrokes and the…
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Towards the end of Caramel, Nadine Labaki’s debut feature that follows the fortunes of four women who work in a beauty salon in Beirut, is a moment of heartbreaking duplicity that conveys far more than it depicts. It features Jamale (played with barely restrained desperation by Gisele Aouad), a has-been actress hoping for a second…