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Wednesday, January 16, 2013

His Masters Voice


I heard through my friend and today read it in papers that HMV is planning to close its operations. HMV has always been synonymous with DVDs for me. When I was there in UK not a weekend passes without me visiting this beautiful store.


HMV along with Virgin Megastore used to be my two favorite shops. Virgin actually scored above HMV as it beat HMV in price but HMV always remained a symbol of music and movies.

Sometime back I heard Virgin Megastore closed its doors in UK and now HMV is following the same footsteps. Yes this was something expected as the online market is gaining popularity when compared to the traditional shops. But online shopping can never replace the pleasure of browsing through 1000s of physical discs and finally selecting something which you have been wishing for a long time. Now with HMV closing its doors thats the last nail on such a feeling. The future generation will never get to experience the feeling. When we realize HMVs famous logo, especially the faithful dog will soon be going into oblivion it is really painful.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Hardcore 1979

Before 8mm and Tesis there was Hardcore. When we realize that Hardcore was a movie from the 70s it does convey that nothing we see now is new. Everything we see now was happening in the past as well. We have the habit of considering the previous generation as an innocent one but as we go back in the past we can see none of the atrocities that we see now is new and they were being committed from the beginning.


For audiences the movie might remind them of some parts of Mahanadi. Hardcore is all about the search of a highly moralistic father for his missing daughter through the underground world of Porn industry. As he encounters the people in the industry it is also a revelation to us. When the movie ends we do feel sorry for the character Niki who helps him throughout the search. But then that's world ain't it?

Wednesday, January 09, 2013

Friends

"நண்பர்களை துயரத்திலே கண்டுகொள்ளலாம்" this line is from a song from the movie "ராஜா சின்ன ரோஜா".

During the last few days I could actually see how many friends I have and felt bad I never gave enough time for that friendship or understood the value of that friendship. 

Monday, January 07, 2013

Random Movies

Been watching some movies since last week and happened to watch two feel good movies from great directors. I had never heard of the movies but just wanted to try them out and was pleasantly surprised with both of them.

The first one was Flipped a beautiful movie about two teenagers where the girl falls in love (gets flipped) over the guy as a kid and the guy takes years to understand it. The movie had some genuinely heart warming moments. While the narrative was a bit familiar and repetitive only when the credits rolled I noticed the director was Rob Reiner. He is one solid director and most of his movies are in my favorites list. With him as the director we can sure to witness some beautiful moments on screen.

The next one was more like a coming of age movie but with lesser vulgarity and profanity when compared to American Pie. The movie was I Love you Beth Cooper. The characters were not as stupid as they appear in other coming of age movies and there were some moments where there was scope for cinematic cliches but they were avoided for some realism. Only when the end credits roles I noticed it was directed by Chris Columbus another excellent director.

Atlast just finished watching The Painted Veil for the second time and the movie still has the same impact. A poetic movie with a heart wrenching climax.

Thursday, January 03, 2013

When you dont see

There are few things which we can't see even though we have our eyes wide open. No matter how focused you are it just happens right in front of your eyes which you cant notice.

I went for a walk with an elderly person in a park when I was in London. She asked me this question "When does it gets dark in Chennai?". Until then I never cared to notice this behavior but the question was out there and I had to answer it. I did give a random number. She also told that even though we are wide awake darkness just engulfs us without us noticing it. Though we can give some approximate time to it we cannot point a moment and say this is when it happened.

When you are riding a bike during dusk you might consider switching on the headlight after it gets dark but before you knew it you would be riding in darkness.

In life many things happen right under your nose but we fail to notice them.

Recently saw a movie named "Feast of Love". Morgan Freeman played his usual role of narrating the events. In this movie there is a quote where he says the same thing. We just have to keep our eyes open to notice things. The end is always there in the beginning.

A Simple Plan and Just Mercy