Ping

The brief interlude is over - I'm back to finding anonymous concealment in books, movies, music and writing, just like it used to be.

*** I have a long vacation and it has been repeatedly impressed that such days will not show up too often in the rest of my life. So feeling a little like being out on the Rockefeller laws or a final Shwaas-like parole before the guillotine drops, I'm trying to do many of those "things". It reminds me of actor Chris England in his book "From Balham to Bollywood" who writes about how he finds himself succumbing to the desperate fever of squeezing in that extra moment in the holiday. I'm a fan of sleep, but sometimes the pressure is such that even to me, 6+ hours of the zzzs seems to be wasteful.

Plans include catching on some lesser known films at a "European Film Festival" at NFAI, at least one session at Sawai Gandharva and more books than films this time.

*** TV is back and have been catching up on a favourite pastime - movie trailers. Mr. ya Miss is arguably the worst Factory trailer ever and is despairing considering the more creative efforts before. Antara Mali as director? So she cops blame both for screaming too much and making it the focus of the trailers. OTOH, smart work as usual from Sanjay Gupta who has been given credit only by George methinks. And this time, some brownie melting fudge points from me for opting to go for a quieter adjunct song by roping in Strings to do "Yeh Hai Meri Kahani" with a distinctive video featuring the Pakistani rockers along with Sanjay Dutt and John Abraham. Good work. Most of the rest remain good test cases to test the reflexes of the fingers in hitting the remote control buttons. But good visuals from another of the Gupta tribe - Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra's Rang De Basanti showing up with title track racing through.

*** I seem to have become an emotionally driven consumer like many others - truth, despite my cringing at this admission. For a reaction to having made a fool of myself was to go and buy Lance Armstrong's It's not about the bike and others - books are so overpriced these days :-( - got a decent haul at BCL, so there's enough to read.

*** Looking forward to the music of Rang De Basanti - less than a week.