Boredom

The very first time I watched​ Peter O'Toole in a movie was 'The Last Emperor' where he plays a tutor to the incumbent emperor of mainland China. I loved the 'mystic' of that film. To this day, I keep rolling it's climax over in my head. But O'Toole contributed a lot to that movie's effectiveness. I then had to look him over on Internet and it told me that he was an 8 time nominee for Best Actor Oscars without a win and it was a record. Moreover, he had lived his life to the fullest and been dubbed as very mercurial. I then started with his filmography and Like everyone else, went through the ordeal of watching 'Lawrence of Arabia' first. It's to O'Toole's credit that he featured in one of the greatest films ever made under the fantastic direction of the master David Lean. Everyone knows what followed next. A Topsy turvy journey that at the end, endeared him to everyone in film fraternity all over the world. After the Lawrence, I g...

At the moment, Vidarbha is the talk of the town in Indian Cricket. Usually, when a Ranji Trophy finale Concludes, we watch Mumbai lifting that majestic, 15 kilo heavy trophy but that's not been the case for last two years. Last season, they did reach Finals but Parthiv Patel and party spoiled their fun. This year, they didn't even reach Semis. But Mumbai Cricket is in fine state, has always been and we should really talk about their nearest, northern neighbours 'Vidarbha'. Vidarbha cricket has always been known for it's 'honest and hardworking' cricketers. They are known for giving their opposition a fight and scare but it's the finer margins they miss out on and thus lose matches. Their best result in Ranji Trophy's 83-year history, prior to this result, was reaching the QF last year. This year though, couple of things changed. Chandrakant Pandit, a veteran of Mumbai Cricket and a stalwart of Indian domestic cricket who has won so many Ranji Troph...

The mental side of sports has always fascinated me. Earlier, I thought Cricket to be the most demanding of mental game but then every sports, be it Tennis, Golf, Motor sports etc. has got it's share of mental gumption. But Test Cricket is gotta be at the top of this list. You play 6 hrs of Cricket for full five days in front of a sizeable crowd. You gotta be at the top of the game at all times. You cannot slug out there and if you have a reputation to fight for and are an ageing star, currently struggling with form and facing an almighty bowling attack in a foreign land, in front of a hostile crowd who loves to hate you, you just cannot stop fighting. This deadly combination will devour you day in and day out. And that's exactly what happened to Alastair Cook in the first three Magellan Ashes Test Matches. He went 10 innings without a fifty and for a cricketer who is a veteran of 150 Test matches with more than 11000+ test runs, that's as much a dreaded nightmare as one cou...

I was watching David O' Russell's Three Kings yesterday and after the first hour which was accentuated with brilliant comic timing from it's many characters, I thought the film opted out for a 'preachy' rout which was undoubtedly a right one but too easy to predict. My point is that after Katherine Bigelow's The Hurt Locker, everyone got the real point of a worthless war and the true meaning of films such as 'Three Kings' got lost in translation. It doesn't really matter now whether it was Saddam who was bad or Bush Sr. Or Jr. They all did some things right and some things terribly wrong. But at the end, only poor people died and more suffered. All in all, films like Three Kings lost its context in year 2017.

A few days ago, one of our fellow contributors posted a question about our likeness for a 'guilty pleasure' movie and favorite selections. I didn't comment on that thread but mine would have been most probably 'Harry Potter films'. But then, we have all got our list of favorite actors, actresses and their combinations. I have a favorite pair of my own and that's Jack Nicholson and Michael Caine, two of the most decorated Academy Actors of last five decades. I just love seeing Jack in action and as far as Sir Caine's abilities are concerned, I haven't watched a lot of his films but whatever I have seen of him, it has endeared him to me. So when I came across a film where this dream pair was cast and then too in an A-List capacity, I jumped onto it. Film's name was 'Blood and Wine' and it also starred a young Jennifer Lopez and Steven Dorff. My dream pair cooks up a great conspiracy and since it was a bad plan with bad payoffs, it inevitably f...

The Harry Potter Film most endeared to me is 'The Prisoner of Azkaban' and I grew fond of it because of it's two headlining Villainous​ (aka anti-Hero) characters: Professor Lupin and Sirius Black. I have watched it four times if I correctly remember the count. And just like the film and these two characters, I also grew fond and respectful of acting prowess of Gary Oldman and David Thewlis. I had Googled them then and came to know that Gary Oldman had already became an acting giant by then and his primary motivation for doing that film was money. Since then, he has become an eternal favorite to me. But, but I was simultaneously taken aback by Professor Lupin's acts in the film and David's performance and his powerful voice which was as magnificent as his fellow compatriot, the Mighty Alan Rickman's (Severus Snape), were just too good to ignore. Till then, his most high profile and Breakthrough role was that of a motormouth Manchester homeless person in Mike...

A day before yesterday, I posted a series of five topics I was to write about in few days. Well I am starting with the sixth 'unlisted' topic. It's an important one and like many important topics which I often forget to write about, I forgot about it as well. I am truly sorry. The topic in discussion here is 'Deadwood'. It was a western TV series produced by HBO for 3 seasons starting in 2004. It's often is clubbed as the greatest TV series of all time with 'The Sopranos' and 'The Wire', coincidentally it's brethren on HBO. It was cancelled too soon by it's producers because production cost shot up too much and great recession of 2008 was already in motion and since then, and it is now 10 years, the fans of this show are begging HBO to bring it back. So why was 'Deadwood' so famous? Just like 'The Wire', not many people watched it (but they were certainly more than the nos Wire fetched). There were three main reasons...