Happy Birthday Crusader!!!

Its been 3 long years since crusader's birth in blogosphere. And as usual, I forgot another important birthday. This blog turned 3 on 5th July 2008. But being bad at remembering important dates, I forgot this one too. But am happy that my poor blog can't open its mouth and scold me. This year is slightly different from the previous because I started working. In college, I was free all the time and do whatever I wanted. But after I joined work, I had to sit in the office from 9 to 5. But I still found enough time toblog from office. Infact the frequency of my blogs increased after I started working. Coupled with this, I started blogging in my company intranet and am already 43 posts old there. In addition to all this, I started a new malayalam blog. So, altogether this year been a good year for my blogging career. As always, millions of thanks to all those who supported and abused me. Hoping for your continued support in the future also.

your crusader Praveen

Pick this flick 2-Shawshank Redemption

"Hope is a good thing. Maybe the best of things. And a good thing never dies".

It happened about 4 years back, when I was browsing through the DVD collection at the local video renting shop close to my home, a distinct looking cover caught my attention. It carried the image of a man with his hands outstretched in the rain, presenting a picture of some glorious achievement. The quote which I mentioned at the start, accompanied the image. The movie's name was "Shawshank Redemption". I still remember that night, it was about half an hour past 2 when the movie ended, I sat there with a warm heart, like never before and my mind was brimming with some positive energy, the kind of energy which can even make you climb mount everest(Too bad, I didn't set off for the mount that night itself). And it was on that night that the way I looked at movies changed completely.

Shawshank is the pinnacle of moviemaking. If ever every aspect of a movie can come good all in a single movie, it happened here. Be it the heart warming story by Stephen King or the taut screenplay and direction from Frank Darabont or the mind blowing acting by Morgan Freeman, Tim Robbins and company, you've got it all here. Added to all this is Morgan Freeman's legendary narration skills in his deep barritone voice. Andy Dufresne(Tim Robbins) arrives in Shawshank prison convicted of murdering his wife and her boyfriend. He has to serve a double life sentence. The prison is notorious for its corrupt and cruel wardens, inmates who are hardened criminals and most of all for the hell-like prison life. Morgan Freeman plays 'Red', who has already served 20 years for a murder charge. He's the one who smuggles and supplies essential commodities to everyone in the prison. He'll smuggle you anything from a toothbrush to Rita Hayworth. The two of them develop a great friendship.

Dufresne becomes a favourite with the guards by providing them sound financial advice. There's a scene in which he gets a bottle of beer for all his friends in return for a financial advice to the warden. The way he sits in a corner and watches his friends enjoying the beer in the shining sun, like free men, is unforgettable. Not to forget that iconic scene of Dufresne standing with his arms outstretched after wading through "200 yards of pure shit". The script is full of dialogues which are worth pasting on your walls as daily inspiration. There's this scene where Dufresne wins a grant to buy new books for the prison library after years of non-stop requests to the higher authorities. After he receives the grant and the books, he smiles and says "Thank God, it took only 6 years". Now, that can be called 'the heights of positive thinking'.

IMDB rates it #2 in the list of top 250 movies of alltime, just behind the one and only Godfather. I would dare to rate it as the undisputed #1 in my own personal list. For me, no movie hence or before was able to match up with this ultimate cinematic experience.

PS- One of my favorite characters from the movie is that of the old man Brooks, who has spent most of his life in prison. He maintains the prison library and delivers books to the inmates. He carries a crow in his pocket whom he affectionately calls Jake. He's so used to the life in prison that on the day of his release, he tries to kill a fellow prison mate so that they will put him back to prison. When he gets out, he finds it hard to cope with the changes that have taken place in the world and atlast he ends his life. 2 years back, when I wrote the first song for our band, I came up with a story similar to this. At the time of writing the song, I never thought about this movie. But recently when my friend asked whether this movie was the inspiration for that song, it struck me. This particular part of the movie was somewhere at the back of my mind when I wrote that song because it was so strikingly similar.

your crusader Praveen

Page 3

These days, if you take a newspaper in the morning and start turning the pages, every page looks like page 3. There are volumes written on glitzy parties thrown by wealthy wannabe celebrties. There are snaps oozing with glamour of mostly unknown people with random names like John, Jack, Rahul, Arshad, Jenny, Vidya etc etc. There are also some celebrity pics thrown in. I've always wondered who these people actually are? Because, these are not people you usually see in the news nor are they known public figures. But, these people's snaps are there on page 3 with their names given underneath as if they are well known people. I was thinking may be am not so informed on the glitzy party world. Then it happened. Recently, I saw the pic of a gal whom I know in page 3 of Bangalore times. Thats when I understood, you need not be a celebrity to be in those pages but you just need to have a fat pocket...Just think to what depths journalism has slumped.

your crusader Praveen

Ithihaasan-Malayalam Blog

Am glad to announce the official launch of my malayalam blog-ithihaasan. From now on, all my articles in malayalam will be posted here. All the previous malayalam articles that I posted here have been moved to the new blog. Check it out now and subscribe if you like...

http://ithihaasan.blogspot.com/

your crusader Praveen

Sam 'Bahadur' Manekshaw-India's greatest soldier

He was India's greatest soldier who led us to that great victory against Pakistan in 1971. His exploits on the battlefield are as legendary as his thoughtful and witty quips off it. He was one of the only 3 Indians ever to travel in a car adorned with 5 stars, given to the Field Marshal. He was one of those rare breed of military men who showed the courage to take on the political establishment, most notably the defence minister V.K.Krishna Menon and PM Indira Gandhi. More than all that, he was a great human being. With the demise of Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, India has lost an one of a kind soldier, who inspired thousands to join the armed forces. Still now,almost 30 years after he hung up his boots, he's worshipped like a God among army men.

The funeral happened yesterday at Wellington,TamilNadu. What perplexed everyone was the absence of India's military and political leadership at the ceremony. No one, the President, Prime minister, defence minister or any of the chief of Armed forces turned up to pay their respects to him. It indeed speaks volumes on these respected people's attitude. They all flock with their families to celebrity weddings, cricket matches, funerals of dirty politicians who can best be called 'waste of semen' and to parties hosted by businessmen. Yet, they couldn't spare half a day to honour a man who has contributed so much to the country. We all know they don't care about such things.Atleast, they could've made a show of it by making a brief apperance, as they always do. Most of them used 'protocol issues' as the reason for staying away from the ceremony. Am not sure which protocol says that they shudn't attend a Field Marshal's funeral.

A man of Sam's stature doesn't deserve to be treated like this. This was a man who defeated death more than once in the battlefield. No one will ever forget his immortal words "I got hit by a mule" after surviving 18 bullets during the world war II or his "sweetie" call to Indira Gandhi. Let us all salute this courageous man whose inspiring leadership and brilliant thinking gave India one of its greatest victories ever. Sam Bahadur ki Jai!!!

your crusader Praveen

Pick This Flick 1-Run Lola Run

Starting today, am gonna start a weekly column in my blog- "Pick this flick". You can expect to read about an interesting movie, not necessarily new, every week. I'll start off the column with one of the most unconventional movies I've ever watched- The German movie 'Run Lola Run'('Lola Rennt' is the original German title). Directed by Tom Tykwer and starring Franka Potente as Lola, this is one hell of a non-stop roller coaster ride for 1 hour and 20 minutes. 'Pulsating' is what I'll say, if asked to describe the film in one word. The film starts with Manni, Lola's boyfriend messing up his job to transfer 100,000 Deutsche Mark to his mafia boss. He forgets to take the bag as he gets out of a suburban train. A streetside beggar goes away with the money. Manni makes a phone call to Lola asking her to rescue his life. He will have to pay the money to his boss in 20 minutes, else he'll get killed. She promises to somehow get him the money. Thats when the exhilarating ride kickstarts.

Lola starts her incredible run to save her boyfriend. The film proceeds on to show 3 different scenarios and what are the results by proceeding in each of the scenarios. Am not going to write anything about it, as its better to experience it yourself than be told how the experience is. In each of the 3 different scenarios, the timing and actions change a bit. The end result of this small changes are very big and beyond our imaginations. A small change in the way a person run can cause unimaginable changes in the lives of the people passing by. We can see small echoes of the popular 'chaos theory' and 'butterfly effect' in this. There's not a single moment of slow frames in the film and you'll find yourself running alongwith the script at breakneck speed. A thumping soundtrack accompanies the whole length of the movie. The soundtrack, heavily loaded with trance, is one of the many charming aspects of this movie. I've also heard somebody mentioning about the use of the colour red. Its there in almost every scene, right from the lady's red hair to the red ambulance. The movie raises so many questions about time, destiny and life. But in the end, it all boils down to a question of 'What if'-What if I had not bumped into him? What if I didn't take a left turn? This movie shows the immense possibilities of life in its simplest way possible. Go, get the DVD, jump on the couch and start running with LOLA...

your crusader Praveen

Welcome Dell...Adios to dear desktop
And atlast it happened. Am blogging from my own brand new laptop. After bidding goodbye to my desktop back home in Trivandrum, I been surviving on the lousy systems available at cyber cafes and the blocked up systems that my company provides. For the last many months, I been facing that dreadful message "Our policy doesn't allow you access to this particular website". And this list of particular websites include all the email sites, our own blogger, some well-known proxy sites and all other sites which they find unsuitable for us. But, being jobless @ office or for that matter, having light work has its own advantages. Armed with the slogan "Company blocks, I unblock", I went on discovering new ways of accessing my favourite sites. I found out new proxies everyday and they kept on blocking it somehow the very next day. This hunt for proxies has gone on for too long that now am using a proxy that I got from the 27th page of google search for "gmail proxies". And this proxy has the record for the proxy which survived the most without being detected by the prying eyes of the policy makers. Also, surfing from office is a hard task if you are a person who cares what others think about you[thankfully, am not one of those]. Anyway, its goodbye to all those days.

Now, am safely surfing the net and writing blogs from home, safe from the prying eyes of my workmates. The only problem are the room mates who are hatching plans to investigate about my online escapades. Hope they will fall flat in that attempt. Coming to my laptop, its a DELL Inspiron 1525 system with Intel core 2 duo processor, 2GB RAM, 160 GB HDD and a 15" monitor. I got BSNL's new EVDO net connection after a long wait of one week. Now its blog @ home again after a long time. By the way, just thought about my PC which is now lying unused in my room like an old man awaiting imminent death. Its been my constant companion from my 10th class till the completion of my engineering. Apart from me, its the only other person(yeah, I consider it as a human made up of flesh,blood,bones and some shit) to have known all my secrets(not that I have many:P). Now, its old enough to be declared as a 'computing museum'. So with a big bow to that computer which has seen many historical events that I went through, I start blogging from my new laptop.

your crusader Praveen

13-ophobia

This post is inspired by Dickson Abraham's post on Paraskavedekatriaphobia. If you are wondering, what the hell that is, its the fear of 'Friday the 13th'. Anyway, according to him, my fear can be classified as triskaidekaphobia, just the fear of the number 13. Am not a person who believes in such silly stuff. But there's a solid reason behind this particular fear. This happened when I was in 8th standard. My roll number for that year was 13. Usually my roll number for all years been numbers over 30, as my name starts with P. But mysteriously this year, I was 13th on the roll. But I din't give it much of a thought as 13 was just like any other number for me, back then. Things began changing when the exams and marks started coming. I was a bit studious till 7th standard and used to be in top 5 of the class till then. Suddenly, this year I found myself failing in exams and especially maths. I din't pass for maths that whole year. In the final exam, because of the teacher's kindness, I somehow got through. Anyway, after that year I was relegated[in my opinion, promoted] from ICSE to the state syllabus. All this maybe due to some other causes but even today whenever I see the number 13, it causes butterflies to flutter in my belly.

your crusader Praveen

IPL-Cheerleaders,Slaps,Kisses...& Cricket

IPL has caught the imagination of the whole cricketing world and has turned out to be a bigger success than that was predicted. The controversies has added to the popularity of the tournament. Am sure no one will ever forget the great crying scene starring 'tough guy' Sreesanth. This single scene is said to have melted the hearts of women across India and they are now watching IPL regularly instead of their staple diet of 'Saas-Bahu' serials. According to an unofficial survey conducted by this blogger, they are expecting more tear-filled episodes in the IPL thamasha. Teenage guys who were moving away to more fashionable sports like formula 1,NBA and EPL have suddenly started loving cricket. No prizes for guessing the reason. Cheerleaders, ofcourse. The teens find it economic and safer to watch them when compared to renting an adult film cd and secretly watching them. Now they can watch all these safely in front of their parents under the pretext of watching 'cricket'. Even middle aged and expiry aged old men are watching this sport for the first time for this reason alone. And then there are the politicians. Their new hobby is dressing up the cheerleaders. My request to them is-"Please leave alone the poor girls and let them do their job. There are millions of people who don't have money to buy clothes in India. Why don't you think of some policies and aid programs to give them adequate food and shelter rather than investigating on which part of which cheerleader was exposed in the latest match of IPL".

The local chaiwala as well as the high end pubs are also enjoying the fruits of IPL as people crowd around TV shops and big screens every night to watch the matches. The cricketers are all happy except men like Charu sharma and teams like Bangalore. There've been unworthy men like Ponting who played and got paid and are now back home blaming the IPL. He's now asking his countrymen to switch off from IPL and stop paying attention to some retired australian cricketers sweating it out in India. Then, why did he keep quiet while he was busy playing in India? The film stars are also enjoying their night out at the various grounds around India. Shahrukh is seen dancing and screaming for his knight riders but sadly that dance won't last long as they will exit without seeing the semis. The lucky guys are the ones from Kings XI Punjab. Whenever they win a match, they get free hugs and kisses from their pretty owner Preity. Its no wonder then that the guys are competing with each other to win the honours. The list of top wicket takers in IPL is dominated by guys from Kings XI. Wondering how many kisses each of them got.

The star or better to say, the wannabe star of the whole show is undoubtedly the IPL boss Lalit Modi. He's a publicity hungry man who never lets go a photo op. My favourite scene was during the press meet after the Sreesanth-slap, Farooq Engineer made Bhajji and Sree shake hands and make up. The three of them were holding hands together and smiling when a third hand appeared from behind holding them. Then a head popped out and it was our glam boy Lalit. He also has this dirty habit of sitting with and cheering the team that is playing well at the moment. During one cliffhanger match, he had to switch ends atleast 5 times. Anyway, at the end of the match, he would be sitting with the winning team. Meanwhile, Mr.cool 'forever young' Vijay Mallya is having a bad time, with his team discovering news ways of losing with every passing match. His outbursts against Dravid and his team of attacking 'test' players hasn't added anything to his public image, rather it has taken some beating. But there was no shortage in the number of hot damsels accompanying him to watch the matches.

Coming to the cricket part of IPL, despite some so called purists calling it a 'rape of cricket', the matches were well fought in the right spirit and is one great dazzling advertisement for the game of cricket. It tests the skiils of the players to the maximum and puts their quick thinking ability to a hard grind. The old players who were predicted to perish in the tornado of slam bang hitting has infact shone even better than the young guns. Players like Sanath Jayasurya, Shane Warne, McGrath and Sachin Tendulkar are as athletic and spirited as any 20 year old. Their presence has infact turned out to be a blessing for the young ones who get the right guidance from these giants. The greatest gain of the IPL has been the bringing of some unheard of cricketing talents to the limelight. Players like Shikhar Dhawan, Gony, Saha, Abhishek Nayar and many others who were unheard of just 2 months back are now household names. Really, the future of Indian cricket is in safe hands. And there is a big talent pool in place now.

Having been there at the Chinnaswamy Stadium to watch the grand opening of this great sporting fest, am happy to see its astounding success. All in all we can say that the IPL party is here to stay. And 20-20 is the future of the game.

PS-The team is support is Mumbai, just for the simple reason of it being Sachin's team. Even after it lost 4 matches and friends made fun of me for supporting them, I continued my support. And now see what they've done. 6 straight wins and almost won the 7th, if not for some crazy run outs and some umpiring errors. Hope they'll win the championship.

your crusader Praveen

Cooking an art movie

Yesterday, saw a post in infyblogs about the ingredients of a horror movie. That inspired me to think on what are the main rules that make up an art movie[or better known under the pet name of award movies].

Rule No.1-The editor is always on bench during the production of the movie. He's only there for the sake of an editor's name in the credit roll. For example, in a movie that I saw recently, there was a crippled child walking along a long road. The scene went on for almost 4 minutes with the whole walking distance being shown on screen.

Some art movie editors are known to do part time job as barbers because they hate a day without cutting.

Rule No.2-Rate of dialogue delivery is one word per minute. In case of a full sentence, you may have to wait for anything from 5 to 30 minutes.

Rule No.3-Words are best left unsaid. For conveying important matters, words are never used. A meaningful glance is enough. Sometimes this can be in varied forms like utterances of "mmmmmmm","aaahaaaa", "aarggghhh", "huhhhh", "aaah","ooooh","ohooo" etc.

Rule No.4-This is a kind of corollary for rule no.3. Speak lots of sentences about obvious and mundane things.
For example-Take the following dialogue between artan and arty


Artan(coming towards arty who is brushing her teeth.Reaches near her after a 5 minute walk)-"I think you are brushing your teeth."[As if a toothbrush inside your mouth is meant for something else]

Arty(slowly raising her face which takes another 2 minutes)-"Yes, I have the habit of brushing my teeth every morning."[Only she has that habit]


Rule No.5-Background music is mostly slow and depressing. The pivotal scenes are usually silent.

Rule No.6-Cameraman is the man getting to sleep the most on the sets. He needs to move the camera only once or twice during the whole shoot.

Rule No.7-The theme of the movie mostly deals with the lower strata of the soceity. There will be lots of scenes of sufferings of one way or the other.

Rule No.8-The actors are the most patient people you can find anywhere in the world[Next to the viewers i.e.]. They should be able to sit for long hours without a single movement, leave alone doing anything. Those who have done tableau in school can shine a lot in this field.

Rule No.9-Forces of nature like wind,rain,sunshine and creatures like dog,cat,crow,eagle get almost the same screen space[sometimes even more] as the lead actors.

Rule No.10-There is no beginning and there is no ending. The movie will be just like saying "and life goes on".


Inspite of all this, I've seen some really touching art house movies that will always be in my list of all time favourite movies.

your crusader Praveen