My Favourites from Reel Life

I have been a movie buff for quite some time now. Movies are great media for the simple reason that while imitating life they portray larger-than-life characters and incidents. I had my awakening into moviedom somewhere in the middle of the nineties, back when Cable Television in India was ruling the roost surpassing, by far, anything that had existed until then. Before Cable TV all we had were a couple of channels (a third one emerged a bit later, I think) from the Doordarshan stable, which was and still is India’s National Broadcaster. I would imagine that the TV remote was defunct back then!

Well, with Cable TV came the only decent and dedicated movie channel on offer at that time, Star Movies. It was around that time that I became hooked onto some very good (and some bad ones, I might add) cinematic fare. Once that happened Hindi movies started to look pretty ordinary. Please don’t get me wrong, I appreciate good cinema in whatever language it is presented in, but somehow at that point in time Hindi movies were very amateurish with the least attention given to the script.

Fast forward to the present time and we are in the middle of a cinematic revolution in India, with some very original concepts, terrific technique and very good presentation. I think people in India would agree with me when I say that a large share of the credit for this revolution must be given to Laagan, a breakthrough film from every point of view.

For me, any talk of cinema is incomplete without mentioning the maestro of Bengali cinema, Satyajit Ray. You know, back when I was a kid, people close to me used to comment that his cinema, while being very thought provoking and cerebral filled with analogies and allusions. But for me, Ray remains this master story-teller who will draw you into his canvas and make you empathise while at the same time thoroughly entertaining you. For the uninitiated I would recommend Parash Pathar (The Philosopher’s Stone), the Apu Trilogy (consisting of Pather Panchali (Song Of The Little Road), Aparajito (The Unvanquished) and Apur Sansar (The World of Apu)), Kanchenjungha, Aranyer Din Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest) and the Feluda and Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne films.

To be continued…

What an Imagination, Mr. Lennon!

If ever there was a single example of artistic expression that encompassed humanity in general and the “brotherhood of man” in particular, this is it.

Yes, I’m of course talking about the song Imagine by John Lennon, from his 1971 album, Imagine. For me, the song is a cry for sanity and sensibility more than a longing for Utopia, as it is widely considered to be. From a purely literary point of view, the lyrics is pure genious.

The song is brilliant in its simplicity but is at the same time profound and thought provoking. People often spend an entire lifetime trying to come up with material like that but usually come up short.

As far as accolades are concerned, Imagine is highly decorated. Here are some of the awards and recognition bestowed on the song as per Wikipedia:

• In 1999, BMI named “Imagine” as one of the top 100 most performed songs of the 20th century.
• Lennon’s original recording of “Imagine” appears 23rd in the list of best-selling singles in the UK issued in 2002.
• In November 2004, ranked 3rd on Rolling Stone’s list of the RS 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
• On 1 January 2005, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation named “Imagine” the greatest song in the past 100 years, as voted by listeners, on the show 50 Tracks.
• The song ranked #30 on the Recording Industry Association of America’s list of the 365 Songs of the Century bearing the most historical significance.
• Virgin Radio conducted a UK favourite song survey in December 2005, and Imagine was voted into top spot, beating Beatles songs Hey Jude and Let It Be.
• The song was voted the greatest song of all time by the Nine Network’s 20 to 1 countdown show in Australia on September 12, 2006.
• Less than a week after John Lennon’s catalogue was released on iTunes, the song went up to #63 on the top 100 list.

The music video of the song featuring Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono is an intensely personal one. Personally speaking, it does not do justice to the brilliance of the song and looks more like an expensively shot home-video at best.

Check the video out for yourself and feel free to draw your own conclusions! But please don’t forget to drop a line about your opinions!

In case you want to sing along or just appreciate the poetic mastery of Mr. Lennon, the words are given below:

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today…

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace…

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world…

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one…

Hat’s Off, John Lennon. I only hope you have found what you were looking for…

One Reality

Found this very interesting article at the following URL:

http://www.expandyourmind.com/philosophy/

Read on… 

Each of us perceives the world through our own unique senses, or filters. Images, colors, textures, scents, and emotions are all unique to our own interpretation. As a consequence to this uniqueness, however, it is impossible to compare our own perceptions to others, as there is no medium to weigh the relative discernment.

For example, how can you be sure that what one person sees as red is the same hue value that another sees as red. Even if both people are looking at the same red fire engine, the hue may be interpreted differently. A fire engine is only a single color, in reality, even though it may be perceived to vary in color from person to person. When do you know that a dream is a dream? — when you wake up from it, right? But right up until that point, you have no way of knowing that you are in a dream state. It’s the relative reality of “consciousness” that makes one conclude that they have just experienced a dream.How do we know that what we perceive as human beings is an accurate representation of what really exists at all? Since certain animals have more acute hearing, sight, and touch than the human being, our limited perception restricts our ability to decode what is real. This makes it very difficult for us to decipher what is reality and what is not. The only thing we can be sure of is how we define our own reality.Reality, according to the Webster’s Dictionary, is “the state or quality of being real; actual being or existence of anything, in distinction from mere appearance; fact.”  Therefore, reality is the actual state of an object or event, irrespective of the perceiver’s subjective interpretations.On the night of June 12th, 1994, a certain reality took place, possibly involving O.J. Simpson. Although various investigators and lawyers gave conflicting “stories,” there is without debate one true reality of how the events unfolded that fateful night. Maybe only a single individual knows exactly what happened, but there is none-the-less only a single reality.This concept is analogous to practically every aspect of life. Anything can be perceived or assumed to have taken place in infinite ways, while all along, there is only one true reality. It seems that the most confusing and debated concept of a single reality, is how the universe and the human came into existence. There are numerous scientific and religious explanations for these questions, yet most of the accounts are direct contradictions to the other explanations.So, how then, do we know what is reality?

My first Blog…

     I admit it! I’m as amateur as they come when it comes to blogging (derived from Web Logging I’m told, see I’m learning already!). When I first heard about it (surprisingly it was a pretty long time ago) I was quite, nay thoroughly cynical of blogging as a medium.

     I had registered myself with a few blogs previously (one of them being my company site) and even posted some material (most of them plagiarised I must admit or as I prefer to call it, Cut-Copy-Paste). But somehow I never caught on with it.

     It was pretty recently that one of my work buddies, Amyth (TalkingTails), who’s part of the who’s-who (note the humble attempt at alliteration!) of blogging in Calcutta, (I hate refering to it as Kolkata) rekindled my desire, as it were, of expressing myself by reintroducing me to Blogging. Please don’t be modest Amit, recognition must be given where it is due.

     I hope that this time around I’ll be able to sustain my interest and keep blogging. Let’s get this show on the road!