In which the author expresses a desire to sue Hollywood.

Each questionably great romantic comedy ends similarly but differently. With the love of their life gone far far away due to a misunderstanding, the protagonist realizes the hard way that life without said romantic partner is cold and loveless. And so begins the last scene, one you mindlessly cheer on knowing of the situation’s improbability and the predictableness of the ending.
Rex Harrisson as Henry Higgins, after his impassioned and somewhat misogynistic “Why Can’t A Woman Be More Like A Man?” soon realizes that the Cockney Eliza Doolittle was more than just an experiment. George Peppard, the impoverished boytoy writer and Audrey Hepburn, the whimsical socialite Holly Golightly look for a stray cat called Cat in the pouring rain in a back alley, accepting that as two drifters, they’d just be happier if they stuck together. Runs through terminals, and friendly guards who allow transgressions and breach of security at the risk of their jobs, a romantic conclusion atop the Empire State Building, several years into the future after a casual acquaintance on a road trip vehemently declares that men and women can never be friend because sex will always come in between.
I blame Hollywood for ingraining in me standards that teenage boys will never achieve due to the lack of a scriptwriter controlling their lives and actions.
I blame Hollywood for making me believe in a parallel universe where I would be consoled by a dashing man in a tuxedo, ascending on an escalator, a single rose in his hand and a look of pure love.
I blame Hollywood for wrapping my mind around three words, three words that would emotionally validate me, I refer not to ‘I Love You’ , but Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire with the line, ‘You Complete Me.’
While on one hand, the sheer volume of unwatchable romantic movies cheapens and mocks the idea of love, the film industry has also glorified the same emotion, putting it on a pedestal so high that we are led to assume that we cannot function without a wonderfully kind, loving and considerate significant other.
The purpose of this diatribe is not to advocate the idea of independent singledom. It is selfish. It is to remind myself that I’ve been socially conditioned to emotionally look for things that are fantastical and scripted. Films end with a slow fadeout embrace or a sincere ‘I Love You’ and a consequent kiss of reconciliation. That there is a Happily Ever After is a conclusion out candyfloss mind jumps to.
A relationship is dynamic, and no sprint on tarmac or speech in front of crowds ever conclusively solves anything. If anything it is, at best, a good anecdote for when you grow older. But sooner or later, you will resent something again and at some point the airport is going to list you as a repeat offender on charges of trespassing.
So what do I conclude from all of this? That a relationship is a compromise that you are willing to make, that our environment teaches us things that are not necessarily true. That flying under the radar, being off the grid, and simplicity is just as effective and heart-warming and meaningful as freezing to death in the middle of an ocean watching your lover survive. At least you can be sure that in your case, he didn’t memorize lines that someone else wrote for him, and he’s not reading it out while wearing alarmingly large amounts of makeup.

I'm not dead. Yet. Woops.

Watched Guzaarish today, and I am in awe of Sanjay Leela Bhansali. The man is a genius, and his mind intrigues me. The movie's soundtrack is haunting, melodic, and it also uses a very interesting version of Lux Aeterna. There is something very belief-suspending about the landscape, the use of colours and the simplicity of his characters. Which is not to say that the story or performances lack layering.
The plot is relatively simple, incorporating in itself, among other themes, the Indian judiciary's stance on euthanasia. The cast is wonderfully ensemble - Hrithik Roshan is stunning. The man is a Greek God. Maniacal laughter, and those EYES. The way he walks when he dances - he oozes confidence while being helpless, commands your utmost respect while being a vegetable of a man. And the guy who played Omar (Aditya Roy Kapur, Iloveyouuu) is both cute AND hot. I don't know how he did it but I want him, I just do.

Interestingly I've also been appointed Health Minister in my room, or so it seems, because I'm in charge of confiscating junk food from Bed-against-the-wall, and making Third-from-the-Top take a walk everyday and drag her away from her books and stuff. Our a/c has been spewing chunks of ice into the room at random intervals. While we're aware that this needs to be addressed, no one can do the heart-breaking job of asking for it to be fixed, I mean, it SNOWS in the room (okay sure, you might have your eye put out, but that's a small price to pay for a white Christmas.)

Had lunch at a rooftop restaurant today, overlooking misty hills and trees. It started raining midway through the meal and stopped and rained again. It would have been romantic, were we not surrounded by fat balding men eating egg biryani. That, and the fact that the four other people at the table were my roommates, the ex-roommate, and the girl from the second floor.

Braces have made me incapable of biting my nails. Third-from-the-top is delighted and paints them in different colours. It doesn't take much to make people happy sometimes.

Watched far too many movies this week. Social Network (awesomeness), Dabangg (a totally different kind of awesomeness), Easy A (more awesomeness), and very little of Kynodontas (I need to grow a pair and watch this till the end, but ohmygod, I can't, I really can't.) House Season 7, which is disappointing, must finish off Weeds tomorrow and finally get down to studying something.
On the bright side, I'm going to watch Break ke Baad with the Zionist tomorrow to lech at the leads. Happytimes.

Cue laughtrack.

Somedays you're Serena vanderWoodsen, somedays you're Blair Waldorf, and on other days, you're just Little Jenny Humphrey.
Casting is confusing.

When We Were Young

There's a wildly popular group on Facebook - "Move out of the way, children, I've been waiting 11 years to see Toy Story 3", and once you watch the movie, you'll realize how Pixar waves a hello to it's currently college-bound original audience of the 90s.
In each of us there lives an Andy with wild, riotous imagination and a posse of favourite toys. But just like Andy, the 90s kids grew up and the toys now live dusty, forgotten lives.
"Andy's going to College" are the opening words of this movie, what are the toys going to do now? Do they get donated, stored in the attic or just ruthlessly thrown away? Relegated to a dystopic daycare ruled over by the tyrannical Lotso, the toys decide to break out and return to their original owner, deciding that a forgotten life in the attic (and a chance that Andy's kids might play with them) is better than living their lives out in the living hell that is Sunnyside. What follows is an hilariously entertaining prison-break scenario, toys creeping around under sandcastle buckets trying to escape the eerie Big Baby. As always there is a race against time, and they must get home before Andy leaves for college, but of course, plans go awry.
While the basic plotline is largely predictable, Pixar's treatment of the same is refreshing and engaging, drawing in both the six-year-olds and the nostalgic teenagers, there is physical comedy interspersed with witticism. A wonderfully familiar cast, and of course, 3D. What sets Toy Story 3 apart from Shrek Forever After (in the 3D aspect, because Shrek was just a terrible movie overall) is that even though TS3 doesn't really have scenes that jump out at you from the screen, the effects enhance the ridiculous detailing on the characters, making HD seem primitive. Every colour is just more colourful, and the detailing is insane, like little crayon scratches on Mr. Potato Head, the green paint on Jessie's hair, which doesn't disappear. It's amazing how much love and care has been put into the movie.
At the core of it all, there is that little pang of a largely unrealised emotion that will run through you as you watch it. You wonder where your own toys are, and you wonder if they miss you. What makes this movie successful, dramatically, is that you are completely drawn in, cringing in fright and apprehension at the climax, even though you know that this isn't how it will end. And when it does end, it is all you can do to stop yourself from crying.
Pixar ALWAYS does this, in all of its movies (especially if you remember the cinematic brilliance of Carl and Ellie's montage in Up!)You have your fun, you have that exhilarating adrenaline ride full of laughs and rainbows, and then comes that one moment that'll leave you thinking about assorted things. I promise to not spoil it for you, but you have to promise you'll watch this movie.
With Andy driving away, you know it's over. We've all driven (or been driven) away from the past, and you can watch all the films and buy all the merchandise you want, you will never be that wide-eyed-six-year-old in the seat next to you ever again. It's a heavy price to pay to understand the entire poignancy of that ending sequence of Toy Story 3, but it is, in a way, closure.
Thank you Pixar, for nudging me just a little bit closer to adulthood. In the gentlest way possible. :)

P.S. - You should really watch that montage from Up! I even linked it for you.

I hope I never get sober.

What is it about chick flicks that make them so magnetic and endearing, despite their very obvious formula-like approach of plot?
Boy meets Girl.
Connection.
Progression of Relationship.
Stupid misunderstanding.
Clear it up.
Kiss.
Wedding, or a ride into the sunset, or something appropriately saccharine-sweet to leave you with unrealistic expectations at the end.
I don't get it. I mean, I do. But also I don't.
So you know there are these epic love stories, which work out perfectly till the end. And they're not necessarily the ones that fade out on the old couple on the park bench. Not the ones with the kisses in the rain like The Notebook. Call me stupid, hell, call me repetitive, but my version of love is where I'm kept awake all night talking of inconsequential things. It's the nicest thing in the world, you know?
There's this lyric by Keane, from their song Spiralling (Album - Perfect Symmetry) which goes - "When we fall in love we're just falling in love with ourselves". I didn't understand it at first. But yes, it makes sense now. It just does. You're falling in love with someone else who is falling in love with you so you're falling in love with yourself. Geddit? Which brings me to this other lyrics, Bodies by Robbie Williams (Reality killed the Video Star), "All we ever want is to look good naked hoping someone can take it." Music bewilders me and I love it. And it's not just music I talk about sometimes.
Someone on the second floor scrawled "Love is a chronic hallucination" on a window pane. It feels like a new assignment for my brain. Stop doing this to me, man.

"Stella, oh Stella for Star!"

I've written about A Streetcar Named Desire before, back when I read the play, but I finally got the time to watch the Elia Kazan directed movie, and I swear to God, I think I want a man from the fifties. I know, I know, Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski is in no way the perfect man, but oh, oh but he just is. Just so hot. 

The way he strolls across the room like he owns it because he does. The way he throws the radio out through the window. Animal screams and puppy dog eyes, the rage under the shower and then the desolate little boy at the foot of the staircase, and all he wants is Stella. 

I'm telling you. The man's an animal. He's disgusting, he's crude, a little... "primitive", but you watch that scene where he comes back the morning after the poker party, with the greasy wifebeater, that hat on his head, and all that horrible grime and sweat and hard work on the fore-arms, you tell me after you see that scene, I'm pretty sure you want to get beaten by him too. 

I'm not saying I condone wife-beating. I'm just saying that there is probably a part of everyone, okay fine, me, that doesn't want to be all strong and confident and independent and free-living. A part of wants to be that completely wishy-washy females that feminists weep for. I don't know, and if you ask me on any other day I'll probably laugh you off for ever bringing this up again, but sometimes you just need a manly man like Stanley Kowalski to make you grin like an idiot. :)

"I need excitement, oh I need it bad."

Extended weekends mean I live in Chennai. And I'm going to be cool, I'm going to tell you I watched two Oscar-nominated movies, but I'm going to be normal because I'm not that high-brow, I watched two nominees out of five in the Best Animated Feature category, The Princess and the Frog, and Up!
Saturday night I was on the beach, buzzed on beer in a stunning white house with sand in my toes, slurring on Facebook and watching the saucer moon with saucer eyes praying for company of the kind in my head.
And then of course, one day of my break was spent sitting entirely on the laptop grinning my arse off, hey that's just, regular procedure. Also watched the Germany vs. Korea hockey game last night with my dad, I think he was rather surprised with the fact that I acknowledged his existence. But now I know what a drag-and-flick is. I have also realised that I subconsciously support Germany all the damn time. I don't get it. But hey-oh, go Deustchland!
Went to visit my grandparents today, and I got a haircut which I describe as "Stepford minus the evil doubleplus the cute". For the first time in approxinately three years I have hair that I do not hate.
I'm currently obsessed with the following songs. Automatisch, Tokio Hotel. Bodies, Robbie Williams. Edit, Regina Spektor. Teenage Kicks, Snow Patrol.
Additionally, these lyrics are pretty good.

The Magical World of Disney

I finally got my room mates to watch Mulan with me last night. I love that movie and they love that movie and I think I like them a little more now. 

i'm thinking you should ignore the innuendo

This is Grouse Lodge,a residential (the only residential) recording studio in Ireland. More importantly, this is where Snow Patrol recorded "The Planets Bend Between Us".
And this is also where Muse recorded "Absolution".
Okay, so apparently it has like, this swanky pool and this shiny health spa and stuff, and there's all this technicial shazam about how good the recording facilities are. There are separate acoustic rooms and all.
I'm not a musician.
But I'd light a fire in that fireplace when it's cold and dark we'll throw a rug over our feet and drink a little too much liquor the kind that gets to us slowly.
We'll get slurrier the world will be blurrier as the night wears on and at three in the morning we'll put on our boots and our fly-away scarves step out in the faint morning light.
With palms on the rough stone we'll find our way around a town we don't know shoes scraping on cobbled pathways electric bulbs in grimy mullioned windows the wind thrashing whistling through trees so tall tall tall.
Freezing noses red like traffic stop signs I see you through the fog of your cloudy breath.
I'm not a musician.
But.
We should make music!

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I need a decent winter and I need to get laid.
Well you're half correct.

Why Don't We Do It In The Road?

I watched TV after so long.
You know, there's that ad for Orra Platinum that's just incredibly sexy. The guy with the crazy hair and that lusty look and that girl who's wearing his shirt.
Muchos sexy.

Anushka Sen, STOP what you're thinking right now, it's not like that, I liked it aagey theke. Kindly refrain from acting annoyingly all-knowing in the comment box.

The highway from Vellore to Chennai is so beautiful, one day I want to walk down it. Except that it's 130 kilometres and I'll probably be a potato chip by the time I get there.

"It was lame with a cliche, but we carried on anyway"

At some points in your life, all you can do is grin, you see,

Because all you want to do is grin, because you're happy

And you know it,

But you don't clap your hands

Because that's just lame.

There's this song that I keep returning to, "You Don't Know Me", by Ben Folds and Regina Spektor. It always makes me smile. In a strange way that I just want to grab someone off the street and do a little dance with them, swing around a lamp-post and pretend I'm a Broadway star.

Sometimes, I walk like I'm in a music video, with a slight half-smile on my face, I know you're watching, you know I don't care, we know we know. And I mouth the song along, contemplative when the song is moody, an angry stomp with the drum beat, a flick of the hair with the last guitar twang.

It's conceited, yes it is, but I impress myself easily, it doesn't take much, and that makes me happy.

"I need you so much closer, so come on, come on"

I watched Kramer Vs. Kramer last night.

Divorces are sad things.

And crying children are the WORST.