Aa Chal Ke Tujhe...

How does one write about Kishore Kumar...'The' Kishore Kumar?

How can mere words possibly do justice to his matchless, transcendent genius?

Just finished reading 'Kishore Kumar - Method in Madness' by Derek Bose. An excellent biography written with utmost conviction. Gauging KishoreDa's genius is hardly possible and the book, thankfully, stays away from that aiming solely at informing the reader about the utaar-chadhaao in his life. Sensible approach.

Won't go into details. Suffice is to say that the enigma and awe surrounding KishoreDa is even more aggrandized now and baffles my mind in more ways than one. It's hard for me to quantify Guru's bewildering persona here and I won't even try.

Having read the book, I am, more than ever, addicted to all things Kishore. His and only his songs adorn my playlist since last week, 'revised' Padosan, listened to a hell lot of his rare songs at http://songs.kishorekumar.org/ [an EXCELLENT resource for all KishoreDa bhakts], gonna buy the CDs of Door Gagan Ki Chhaon Mein, Half Ticket and Pyaar Kiya Ja...etc etc.

The link listed above is a treasure. Can listen to probably the only recording of a Kishore Kumar radio interview (with Ameen Sayani), his Live concerts at LA and Wembley and a huge number of his lesser known songs. Aaah...what pleasure!



To Be Continued...

6000

My new laptop...R-O-C-K-S !

The Gateway 2500, I guess, lasted 2 years too many (I bought it in September 2000) :-)
Have been pondering over getting a system assembled since graduation. But the lazy and procrastinating me never got around to it.

Came across this offer from Dell. Inspiron 6000 going for S$1499. Decent deal, me thot. Just a cpl of hundred $$$ more than the assembled stuff but given the portability it provides over a desktop - fultu worth it. With all the necessary updates, it sounded a damn good deal and value-for-hard-earned-daallars.

D-day. The gadget was delivered at my office. Wanted to rape the system then and there but had to exercise moral control over my urges until end-of-business. My good old Sri Lankan friend helped me configure/install all the necessary crap and henceforth, left me alone with the machine.

The bitch is 15'4" widescreen, burns DVDs at 8x, stores 100GB, armed with P4 , processes at 1.6GHz and dons shiny silver. What more could a mortal ask for in a laptop! *sniff*

As expected, I spent the last 4 days exploring and playing with it. Runs like a dream! And with the HD capacity, RAM and GHz at hand, I can venture into lot more than that sucker (yes, my old laptop) ever allowed me to.

I'm lovin it!

In the name of one of the greatest movies ever...

Speechless.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

In the name of whiskey
In the name of song

You didn't look back
You didn't belong

In the name of reason
In the name of hope

In the name of religion
In the name of dope

In the name of freedom
You drifted away

To see the sun shining
On someone else's day

...

In the name of United
And the BBC

In the name of Georgie Best
And LSD

In the name of a father
And his wife, the spirit

You said you did not
They said you did it

In the name of justice
In the name of fun

In the name of the father
In the name of the son...


-Bono, In The Name of The Father (1993)

Genius! Period.

Is there any end to Woody Allen's cinematic genius?

Every movie of his that I'd watched over the last 6-8 months has made me bow my head in awe and respect for his infinite brilliance - be it directing, acting or, above all, script-writing. His deftness in dealing with the nuances of human nature, interplay between characters, imaginative set-ups, outrageously clever dialogues and original screenplays is one of a kind. One that has no parallel, can never be imitated, can never be reproduced.

Watched Zelig (1983) last night. What can I say that has not been said before! I could have never imagined that there exists a movie like this one. Shot like a documentary, using old stock footage and newly shot pieces which were 'damaged', run over, stomped on to give them a worn out look for them to gel with the original footage of the 1920s-1930s, the movie plays like a dream. [Forrest Gump (1994) attempted similar effects with some success but it takes guts, a no-holds-barred passion for cinema and large doses of insanity, to actually create a movie around such effects. And 1983 wasn't the most technologically advanced year for moviemaking.] And with Gordon Willis (The Godfather I, II and III) as the cinematographer, nothing can go wrong.

However, it's not the technical superiority alone which makes it great. The plot in itself is, though a li'l weird, extremely captivating. It does run out of steam towards the end 'cos it was a bit overstretched. A great experience, nonetheless.

It's like...take the 'News on the March' short at the beginning of Citizen Kane (1941), bring in a brilliant plot, add in some zany humour and 70 minutes to it and bingo! - we have 'Zelig'. But make sure you hand in the directorial reins to none but Mr. Allen. Or else you run the risk of ending up with something like those corny Star World-ish reality shows.


The movie, much like Scorsese's After Hours (1985) is a little gem that has long been lost in the midst of other illustrious works by the same director(s).

-*-

"It just goes to show what you can do when you're a total psychotic" - Leonard Zelig after flying across the Atlantic in record time... upside down!

Nameless

Been quite long since I wrote some useless stuff here. Laziness. Aargh!

Got back to practicing some sketchin last night. As is obvious I don't have any innate talent for drawing. Just that images, especially pencil sketches, fascinate me and I thought why not explore the stuff some more.

Interesting to see what just a little bit of training can do to your non-existant drawing skills. Was reading stuff about proportions of a human face yesterday and tried to put those to practice right then. The sketch on the right was scribbled many moons ago and quite haphazardly. The 'portrait' (he hee he!) on the left is the result of some basic proportion-gyaan.

The devil, they say,is in the shading. It's a bloody art in itself and can take years to actually get even moderately good at it. Must spend lot of time practicing that.

-*-

"Don't suspect your friends. Report them." - Brazil (1985)