I am actually tired of this soft image of India’s pride which has been cultivated by the Indian media for the better part of the last twenty years. At ground level it sounds almost like the age old concept of family honor in India which is both a mirage and a wound on our modern psyche. Is our pride so fragile that it gets broken every time some random Australian abuses some random Indian in some random place or someone utters some a hard truth about our country.

The fact is that we still haven’t come to the realities that surround our nation, liberalization and the ensuing flow of money have imbibed us with a false sense of pride and arrogance. We have simply assumed that a tonne of cash equals modernism and power, without bothering to look at the basics like education, empowerment and equality. We are too busy comparing ourselves with China and jump at any random analyst report that says that India will be a superpower by 2050 or 2060.

The Chinese are too intelligent to fall into this trap of narcissistic self-image, and are busy working on basics like education, infrastructure and human resource. While they are giving the world a good reason why one should not be a democracy we only seem too happy to reinforce that line of though by showing what happens when you are a democracy.

What we need today is a leadership that instills genuine pride among our population (not the false on promoted by the media) but our leaders are only too drunk on the opium of growth to think about our future, and while China organizes the Olympics, we struggle with our Commonwealth.

]]> http://vineetroy.wordpress.com/2010/09/27/false-pride/feed/ 0 vineetroy http://vineetroy.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/validation-of-violence/ http://vineetroy.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/validation-of-violence/#comments Mon, 13 Sep 2010 18:02:11 +0000 vineetroy http://vineetroy.wordpress.com/?p=182 ]]> The recent events in Kashmir and the escalation of Naxal violence are a clear pointer to one simple and very disturbing fact, that violence works in India, for better or for worse it seems to be the only alternative left for people whose govt gives a deaf ear to all kinds of peaceful protests.

Whether it’s the land reforms, repeal of AFSPA, reservation demands or statehood demands, petitions, sit ins and hunger strikes do not seem to work in India, judicial redress is not an alternative when the average life of a case in court is counted in eons, as if to top it all the press and media doesn’t really care about anything that doesn’t make a good sound bite. Irom Sharmila is notable example, she has been campaigning in Delhi since 2000 for repeal of AFSPA in Manipur but still hasn’t been given a proper audience let alone a promise to look into the matter.

Whether it’s the gujjar agitation, telangana protests, naxal violence or the very recent Kashmir agitations the political class of India is giving the wrong signal by bowing down to violence and not listening to people who adopt democratic means to protest.

If the govt really does indeed repeal the AFSPA in kashmir or water it down then it will send a signal to all North-Eastern states that organized mob violence is the only way to make Delhi hear their cries. It’s of utmost importance today that the govt reassert it’s authority over the land and people by making it clear that the Indian state doesn’t believe in violence and resolution can only be achieved through peaceful means.

The people of this country too need to believe that sending the Army anywhere is not a solution to discontent issues, after all we only need to look into our past…sending General Dyer into a meeting of protesters never solved the problem of people asking for independence, it only exacerbated it.

Above all we must remember that non-violence doesn’t work by itself, it requires a certain kind of audience, it needs that people believe in it for it to work and the day the people of this country stop believing in it…well that would be a very sad day indeed.

To my bewilderment the whole road was empty save for a few youngsters here and there, at first I thought that maybe some communal disturbance had broken out or worse still some bomb had gone off somewhere in the vicinity but there were no signs of heavy police presence anywhere, which made me curious and after rambling through all possible causes I finally figured that this was probably due to the ongoing world cup. This fit in too since a large part of the Brigade Road crowd is a part of the supposedly rich “yo” and “dude” generation(the ones you see in “youngistan” and “fastrack” advertisements.)

Now I am not suggesting that Football is a game for the rich, heck if you happen to be from the few selected states in India where the “working class” game is more popular than others you may think the other way round. In fact football has always been considered the poor man’s game, since it requires such limited infrastructure that you can start playing anywhere and anytime. The entire professional kit, shin-guard, socks and shoes would cost no more than 2-3k, On the other hand the cost of a good bat alone surpasses everything that’s required in football not to mention the other items.

But Indians(read people in the sub-continent) usually have the tendency to buck worldwide trends, here mostly it’s the ruffians and street urchins playing cricket, almost always with a rubber ball while a piece of wood from a broken down piece of furniture serves as the bat. There is no luxury of wickets and a bunch of items usually serve as a replacement for the batsman’s wicket, a two wheeler perhaps , an abandoned wall sometimes, unused bricks from construction site or on many occassions the stump of a tree(mostly in the countryside). As for the bowler’s wicket a chappal or a piece of stone, a “la baseball” style usually does the trick.

On the other side of the spectrum football is mostly played in the city schools by “rich” boys who can afford a football boot ,a rubber ball and a coach.(again I am discounting the three-four states where football has the same status as cricket).

This is a strange predicament as  many people I am sure have noted before in their observations about India. Football is considered to be more natural than Cricket since it resembles the primeval sport of snatching a hunt from your opponents hand plus it’s more physical, requires more physical effort and usually degenerates into a melee. All things seemingly favoured by school kids, yet when you travel through India you see less of the “Joga Bonito” and more a game which was reportedly invented to “soak some sun” in the sun parched English countryside.

I can think of several possible reasons why this is so, but all of them appear as weak and lacking in evidence as the next one, for example one may argue that football being a “true” team game requires a communal sense of ownership which is found lacking in Indians,  (usual references are made about the political preferences of the states where this game is popular) but  evidence appears on the contrary; whatever may be the case with Indian Hockey Team, Indians were and still continue to be good at Hockey which is no less “communal“  than football.

One may also say that Indians as a whole tend to be less sporting and prefer to hide their bodies under tonnes of clothing and sit inside a house. This is partly true as our Olympic record till date shows, but there’s no reason it should apply to Football in particular, most of the Arabian countries share our passion when it comes to hiding your body under clothes and not participating in sports but they still have good Football teams none the less. Then there are the usual accusations about Cricket being a lazy man’s game(a game where Tea is served in between sessions !!) and how no other country plays it, but people obviously choose to overlook Golf in this argument(The laziest game in the world, which also happens to waste a lot of precious real estate), which in-spite of it’s lethargy is quite popular worldwide, esp in the U.S of A, the most efficient country in the world !!

There are also other more frivolous and funny accusations such as Football leads to injury since there is a dearth of open public grasslands here, Indians don’t like contact sports because of the caste system or the more hilarious ones like “you need more brute force than skill in football”, which according to the theory’s proponents explains  why Europeans dominate the game and the Indians fail, but devastatingly fails to explain, how the dimunitive Maradona became one of the greatest players of the game or the rise of Koreans and Japanese in world football.

Coming back to the Brigade Road incident I think that I can easily categorise football fans in India into three categories, one. “The true blue fans”,  two. “The wannabes” and three. “The don’t cares”.

People who belong to the first category regularly follow football, whether it’s local, international or club and at times may have played themselves. The “wannabes”(Brigade Road crowd) wake up to football during times like these and watch the game because everyone else is watching it, their knowledge of footballing talent is usually limited to well known names like “Drogba”, “Messi” or “Ronaldo” which they like to profess to others by wearing cool t-shirts. There is also the desperate need to appear “cooler” than the guy next door who only knows about the “desi” cricket and it’s other “desi” avatars.

Then there’s the last category who would happily watch a Bangladesh-Pakistan encounter during the world cup finals, these are the die-hard cricket fans whose hatred for the “joga bonito” is multiplied by the fact that no one bothers to report news about the Asia cup when the World cup is going on.

Things like these intrigue me and convince me that the lack of popularity of football has in fact nothing to do with any of the things listed above and has in fact more to do with the fact that cricket in India is not subject to the grants and donations of a benevolent organisation like the Govt of India and has developed it’s own funding scheme, though given the suicidal tendencies of the BCCI and the proliferation of global sporting events, how long cricket dominates other sports is a question only time can answer. It’s something akin to the chicken and egg situation, once a game reaches a stage of self-sufficiency it can prosper, which in turn brings in more self-sufficiency , but to reach that stage you do need some kind of a miracle.

Though few people now remember it, old timers frequently recall India’s footballing prowess, in fact I have heard a of one particular tale from my father examplifying India’s golden days in the game. One such tale is a tribute to an old timer “Chuni Goswami“(member of India’s doomed world cup squad which was denied a place because of lack of funds). Well anyways so it goes like this, Chuni Goswami is supposed to have hit a free kick and the ball bounced off the cross-bar, after the completion of the match, he had the organisers measure the height of the cross-bar and as you can guess from the context the height came out to be smaller than what was the standard.

Tales like these are probably apocryphal but they indeed symbolise the golden days of Indian football which in turn makes me hopeful that perhaps maybe it’s possible that with more exposure(one which is not limited to world cups only), the beautiful game will indeed take it’s roots in India.

As for me I used to belong to the first group but am now in the second, hopefully this world cup will mark my return into the fold. Probably it’s time to dust my old boots, and pull up the socks.

Chao for now.

For the uninitiated the book is based on the personal story of Chetan Bhagat and narrates his story from his IIMA days, about how he met his future wife who happened to be a South Indian(read Madrasi) and how he being a North Indian(read Punjabi) came to terms with it, the rest of it as one can figure out, details the travails of the couple as they try to get married in an overtly racist country like India. The book is also littered with charming anecdotes on our our fucked up education system, it’s world renowned products, subtle and loud cliches about North Indians and South Indians(albeit presented in a very entertaining manner) and the over rated MNC culture in the private sector.

If Five point someone was a heavily fictionalized account of his college life, this one’s an account of his love life. The book is full of cliches, make no doubt about it, but it’s also written in a very candid, self deprecating manner, a la “english august” style.  It will only appeal to people who have been through such experiences or have been to Engineering or Management colleges, which is not at all the sign of a good writer. But then CB doesn’t claim to be some kind of literary genius, he is just doing what he likes and is quite honest about it, and I respect him for that. After all honesty esp in writers is indeed very hard to come by these days.

I believe books like movies can be judged by their long term impact on readers and the impact of this one lasted just about under an hour, of course the book was humorous and had me in splits at many places with some delightful comments, some of which I am sure I would be narrating to my colleagues over a cup of coffee, but that’s just about it,  I am not going to brood over it like I have done for many other books, neither am I gonna quote from this anytime soon.

By the time the narrative ends the book ends up reinforcing many stereotypes and prejudices in spite of whatever it’s stated intent was. The writer has sprinkled some insights into the characters here and there but mostly treads in the safer waters by evaluating people through the society’s lens rather than evaluate them personally with respect to their surroundings.  However not all things about the book are bad, I liked Ananya’s character portrayal a lot which is a welcome change from the in your face kind of feminist characters you see being written or portrayed, they are either tend to be too inscrutable in their beliefs to be believable or too effeminate. Some might say she lacks a spine at places but I would say that she has just about the right amount of spine to carry the book through, the male protagonist begins well but gets too bollywoodish for my tastes by the end of the book, the insight in the character having been replaced by placation and pacifism which has been done solely for the purpose of bringing the book to a happy ending.

Of course it’s sort of a true story so it has to be all true, but I felt that the ending kind of looks hurried and forced, I had a similar experience with another book called “Keep off the grass” by Karan Bajaj, which not so incidentally happens to be an IIM book. In fact you get a similar kind of eerie feeling after reading all these IIT/IIM books, it’s almost as if the publisher after reading the manuscript said,

“hey you are going off into a tangent, this is not some fiction work meant for booker, it’s meant for mass consumption, shorten it and make the ending happy”.

I would for once like to hear about a true blue heart ripping story about IIT/IIM grad, not some cheesy tale where Cinderella meets her prince in the end.  Over all the book’s a good read and you will certainly be thoroughly entertained while reading it even clenching your stomach here and there or as the jargon goes “Rolling on the Floor Laughing”,  but that’s probably just about it. You could just say that so what, It’s a light read, I get my money’s worth and it’s an honest work, well if you think so then the book’s just the right one for you.

So how many stars does that make…I don’t know, I find the whole endeavor of awarding stars like the grading or marks system, a truly fucked up arrangement, I think I will pass.

“Whom the Gods love die young”   — Old Saying

When was the last time a movie hit you in stomach and knocked the wind out of your breath, wrenched your heart open and seared your spirit. Now compound that effect a hundred times and you have this, animation that transcends it’s two dimensional life and comes alive before your eyes. It’s been almost a week since I saw the movie, but the images have refused to part with me.

“Hotaru no Haka” translated as “Grave of the fireflies” deserves a place among the top list of any movie lover. It’s anime par excellence, and in my opinion anybody who has any misconceptions about the maturity of Japanese animation should take a look at this masterpiece before pronouncing any judgments.

The movie is an adaption of a book of the same name and narrates the tale of two children Seita, a young teen aged boy and his sister Setsuko a four year old during the closing months of World War II in Japan. It’s more specifically set in the aftermath of the Tokyo Fire bombing raids. (One of the worlds most deadliest air raids on a civilian population). It details the ineffable misfortunes suffered by two innocents in a war that they had nothing to do with. It’s one of the most powerful anti war commentaries I have ever seen and stands out for it’s power to influence. Bereft of any political message, it intends to question the very purpose of a war rather than focus on the causes or villains and it’s what makes it’s appeal universal and transcendent.

Spoilers:

This feature is also worthy of bagging the award for one of the best and most innovative approaches to story telling, no there are no fancy camera tricks or magical editing  only the simplicity of a powerful narrative. Here the final tragic outcome of the story is also the first scene of the movie hence the entire movie is narrated in a sort of flashback by Seita, although the final outcome of the story is never in doubt, it’s tragic potential fails to deter the audience from strongly empathizing with the characters. From the start, we fall in love with the characters , the young and pure hearted Setsuko and the strong willed but immature Seita. The audience watches as the great bombing raids begin, the sibling’s mother is taken away by fate and their only shelter is destroyed, but even as the story moves towards it’s final tragic conclusion our resolve that everything would end on a happy note only deepens. Even when the final end approaches, you have this faint feeling that perhaps everything would go back to normal and we would once again be able to see the smiling faces of these two kids, it’s this powerful longing which slowly rises up your throat leaving your eyes welled up in the final act.

Not for nothing are children considered the purest form of human spirits, they remind us of what it is like to be without fear, lies or deceit, and what it was like to be filled with wonder, joy and curiosity.Story tellers have used them since ages for creating that deep effect on audiences that adult actors seldom bring out, whether it’s Drew Barrymore from E.T or the innocent face of Durga from Pother Pachali. Setsuko although just a sketch on a paper, leaves you with a similar impression, her antics and expressions make it impossible for you not to fall in love with her, and when the end comes you feel impossibly drawn to the tragedy that befalls her. Hers is certainly one of the most profound characters ever written for the screen, I don’t know if  it’s possible to measure out a characters likeness but I guess when you feel more for a characters loneliness than the characters final demise you can be rest assured that the water has finally broken through, it is almost as if you feel happy at the realization that her death will finally relieve her of her sufferings.

Her brother Seita evokes similar feelings, his is a character at cross roads, torn between his desire to provide the best of care to his sister or to live a comfortable careless life. You watch him make mistakes but then you also realize that he is just another human being who is unable to make the most practical choices in his life. In the end his final sacrifice says a lot about his character, though capable of sustaining himself, unable to bear the loneliness of this world and devoid of the will to live any longer he longs to go meet his sister and  family once again, which makes the last and first scene both tragic and peaceful at the same time.

It’s a lost classic that has retained it’s power of impression in spite of all the advances in animation because at it’s heart it’s more than just technology, it’s human emotion. Twenty two years after it was made every frame of this movie deserves to be captured and framed.  I could perhaps go on writing about it but the profoundness of human emotion is measured not by an excess of words but by the lack of it. Perhaps it’s only fitting to end this with a question that Setsuko asks her brother.

Why do Fireflies have to die so soon ?

Similarly our remote knowledge of the term “thief” or “stealing” and “piracy” allows us to equate everything and anything under the sun (sometimes doesn’t even remotely involve activities of such kind) with the aforementioned terms, sometimes with disastrous consequences. This has a lot if not everything to do with our limited understanding of the world of Internet and computers and it’s workings, I see this prejudice manifest everyday. Perhaps people would care more if they knew that the work that many engineers and volunteers do behind the scenes is what makes the world go round everyday. And for this misunderstanding the geeks themselves are to blame, for we have not reached out to the wider audience, and people do not know our world as well as that of say a doctor or a soldier.

At this point it may look like I am going into a tangent but it is important to have a brief understanding of the world of internet before we start discussing this topic.

Prologue : Everyone is familiar with the origins of the internet, a simple google search, I am sure would explain most of it’s history, what a search however doesn’t explicate is the philosophy behind it, the people involved and the ethical paradigms.

The Internet or the world of Computers as we know it today developed in universities and colleges in the 70’s, 80’s and the early 90’s in a free and spontaneous manner, and was largely thanks to individuals who had grown up in the counter-culture era of the 60’s, people like Stallman, John Mc Carthy,  Bill Gosper and many others at MIT, UCB, Princeton and many other places. And thanks to these people the internet and the programmer community in general imbibed the philosophy of the 60’s. Namely

• Sharing – All information should be free
• Openness – All knowledge should be free
• Decentralization — Mistrust Authority esp. Big Corporations and Intrusive Governments
• Free access to computers — Communal access to Computer resources
• World Improvement — Remove distinctions and build a world based on Free speech and merit.

These are also the main guiding principles or what’s called the “Hacker Ethic”. Yes there was a time when the term Hacker was a prestigious term and it still is within geek circles. The Early hackers broke into computers and networks just for a sense of fun and challenge and not for money or any other devious purposes. Another desire to do so was just to taunt the authority, or sometimes just the desire to share knowledge. Primarily being Engineers Hackers were also guided by their ever present desire to do things in a more efficient and honest way, and if it involves breaking a few rules and regulations then so be it. And so it is in the backdrop of all this that the internet as we know today was born, and in spite of all big-daddy regulations and evil MNC’s coming into the picture it still retains it’s wild wild west character, which at once frightens so many ordinary users while bringing cheer to many human rights activists at the same time.

P2P or Torrent as it is known today, arose out of such philosophy and needs since a plain old FTP(File Transfer Protocol) or for that matter any other file sharing technology over the network was inefficient in case there was only server (giver) and many clients(takers). It was never written with the intent of spreading  illegal MP3’s. However the development of MP3 format in the mid 90’s and the explosion of web made P2P an extremely lucrative proposition and the rest as they say is history.

Cut to Today: Big corporations are loathe to change, even when change smacks them right in their face, the collapse of the music industry is a prime example. When digital media first arrived on the scene, the industry was caught napping,  and today they are struggling to survive.(it took the recording industry years to actually come up with the concept of an online music store).

And even when they came on the scene they employed this monster of a weapon called the DRM(Digital Rights Management) , which is just a manifestation of plain old evil, it simply means that you cannot transfer your music even from one PC to another even if you are just transferring it between your own systems. It also denies me the right to share with my friends or family members something which I find very enriching. And mind you this makes no distinction if I am just sharing songs with my girl friend or if I am selling them to the underworld for $5 a piece. Couple this with the obnoxious prices that the companies charge for every song or a video. Prices which nowhere justifies the manufacturing cost or a decent profit.And it’s this thank you but fuck you attitude which often annoys people more than anything else, pushing them to sometimes deliberately break the law, even if it’s just to tease someone.

As if all this weren’t enough to add insult to injury the RIAA is pursuing litigation, sending subpoenas to Internet Service Providers to reveal the names of innocent civilians who may have posted 10-15 songs on some site just for fun. Not only this, they are making them pay fines of millions of dollars, essentially making them bankrupt for their entire lives, talk about proportional justice. A number of sites have come up against this abhorrent practice like boycott RIAA.

It’s a classic case of punishing innocents when you are not able to catch the big fish(read the piracy mafia). And all this time the condition of the average musician or film maker doesn’t improve, he who was receiving a penny yesterday still receives the same cut. The ethical debate on piracy doesn’t justify piracy or stealing, instead it attempts to improve the entire system where in the food directly goes to the mouth that is hungry. It seeks to lessen the booty that MNC’’s earn while providing a steady source of income to the artist. If this sounds like a lot of hot gas to you don’t. The EFF or (Electronic Frontier Foundation, the watchdog organization that prevents the rights of ordinary citizens on the web), has proposed a lot of alternative models that will encourage sharing while at the same time providing a decent source of income for the artist.

The debate about multiplexes can be looked at with a similar lens, most of the pirated stuff that comes out are copies of the most popular film out there and it doesn’t really dent big blockbusters.  While on the other hand it’s big blockbusters which end up cannibalizing the smaller Indie movie makers. The torrents rather than being a source of irritation can become a great source of democratizing the entire system and breaking the monopoly that a few production houses hold over the entire industry.(Remember how YouTube made stars out of unknown individuals).

If someone were to setup a portal that would provide unlimited movies or songs at a nominal monthly price, and make the whole process of paying a lot easier then I guess people would care effing hoot about sharing songs anymore much the way we don’t bother about downloading and sharing youtube videos.   This would not only increase the user base which would in turn compensate for the loss in ticket price but also make it easier for independent film makers to get their movies across.

A few noteworthy attempts have already been made in this regard and the term open source cinema comes to my mind which as the name suggests is an open endeavour, meaning a movie where volunteers come together and contribute time, resources and effort, and everything is done through the use of free tools which are copyright free. one of the most talked about open movies in recent times is the big buck bunny, which won awards as well, here’s it’s preview, you are free to download it and distribute it by the way, just don’t attempt to sell it.

BIG BUCK BUNNY

There have been a few other attempts at providing copyright free music to all and sundry and the result was free music archive , a site where people can listen and download music for free, and it’s good too. Give it a try.

Epilogue : So is piracy bad ? Well it’s a gray term, not a black and white term, the original intent behind piracy was never bad, the driving principles were the same as the ones which guide humanity, love, caring and innovation. The entry of piracy mafia has changed the picture altogether however, but one thing is for certain, without the guiding principles of piracy that built the web, the world would be a lot worse, imagine a world where you cannot voice free speech, or stay anonymous, imagine a world where your entire life is controlled by some fat fucking MNC.

Although it may not look serious right now, but unless we are careful we may be on the verge of losing far bigger things compared to free movies or free music, these are essentially questions germane to the very issues of free speech and individual liberty .Governments and big companies are already beginning to infringe upon it, in case you still don’t believe me, you might think about looking at cases like Dmitry Skylarov’s or the more recent Digital Britain Act, which seeks to propose the three strikes plan, where in your connection will be terminated after three offences.  Not to mention the provisions that will ensure continuous monitoring of your online usage (which will violate countless privacy laws) since it will be otherwise be impossible to obtain a search warrant to search your house for copyrighted material. What’s next …arresting teenagers in their bedrooms ?, these are questions that we must ask ourselves again and again. This is not paranoia but reality, DMCA is already here and maybe something else is just around the horizon.

Some people have called this entire concept of open source and sharing as socialism, I would beg to differ, as I had stated before we must be careful in tailoring a certain experience to a particular term. While certain founding principles like a communal sense of ownership, preference to the producer rather than the seller etc are the same I would just like to call it plain old humanity.

Suggested Readings

• EFF’s guide to internet. (http://w2.eff.org/Net_culture/Net_info/EFF_Net_Guide/netguide.eff )
• The Book  Hackers: Heroes of Computer Revolution by Steven Levy

This one comes from Jason Reitman, the director of Juno and is made in almost the same style,  something which I would like to call casual frankness, wherein the director does not feed you the dialogue through a silver spoon. Not even the slightest attempt is made to set up a tone, temper or facade to enable the plot to reveal itself to you. It kind of hits you straight, much like the jab of a needle with the difference that it’s painless. A style so similar to real life that you don’t feel the need to squirm in your seat while watching the character in pain or get caught in a sugar storm during moments of bliss.

This also means that the script doesn’t go up and down like the waves in a tempest, even the climax looks like it almost has the same pace as the origin. Only when the movie is over and the characters force you to contemplate in retrospect that you truly begin to admire the highs and lows of the movie. And the secret to all this lies in the brutal honesty of the script, the genuine candor and the use of silence like an artists brush, Reitman amazes you with the witty dialogue delivery and the use of complicated situations wherein people have very little to talk about or sometimes nothing at all.

To me it’s almost beginning to look like a genre.

Premise :

Based on the acclaimed novel “Up In the Air” by Walter Kim…Ryan Bingham is an executive who flies from office to office, city to city firing people, or as the company calls it, “enabling them to let go” , just because the owners themselves do not have the guts to do so. He is again a character that we are very familiar with, a middle-aged bachelor man with the charms of James Bond and the affluence of Richie Rich, flying business class, earning in gold and dining in five star hotels, he revels in his own non-committal and nonchalant attitude towards life and takes pride in it. He doesn’t prattle but takes no nonsense either.

It’s recession time and his company is making a good hay out of the entire situation, and he is tagging along just fine until he happens to meet two women and his own family once again after a long time, and then his life happens to take a turn for…….well go figure it out yourself.

The story has nothing novel to offer, except for the character who has an extraordinary job, even which in the current economic context doesn’t seem too contrived. However what makes the movie such a visual treat is the way the story is told and enacted. Clooney yet again does the job so well that you don’t even notice his acting, along with Clooney among the supporting cast, Vera Farmiga puts in a superb performance as the career woman who doesn’t give a fuck about feminism or conventional values along with Anna Kendrick who plays the supercharged rookie eager to prove her mettle. Their performances have received golden globe award nominations and quite deservedly so.

However the movie is not so serious as it may sound, there are many MasterCard moments sprinkled throughout in the movie. Watch out for the scene  where Natalie breaks into tears or where Ryan comforts the groom, priceless indeed. But it isn’t just the moments, the wit or the artlessness which make it a truly memorable watch, it’s the ending. I cannot let anything out here save for the last line, it’s not a giveaway of any kind except for it tells what a wonderful movie it is.

“Tonight most people will be welcomed by jumping dogs and squealing kids, their spouses will ask about their day tonight. They will sleep. The stars will wheel forth from their daytime hiding places, and one of those lights, slightly brighter than the rest will be my wingtip passing over.”

So how many stars does that make ? ah…Stars are for accountants, marketeers and people looking for cheap thrills. Cinema lovers don’t talk in numbers.

you can find the same page  here.