This is what Facebook is for!

The social world online, I believe, is divided into three categories: Facebook fanatics (who live half their lives on Facebook,) Facebook users (who know their limits,) and Facebook ignorant (Facebook? What is that?)

I watched The Social Network seven months after it was released (I got my hands on it only in May!) and thought the film was interesting and well-laid. The screenplay was Oscar-worthy but most of the story was made up–except Zuckerberg’s wardrobe which, he said himself, the film had portrayed correctly every single time. But the point in a film is that it has to entertain and The Social Network did its job well.

Who would have expected now, three years after the incidents in the film, that Facebook would become so entertaining to people?

To Mr Rajinikanth, from nowhere

Mr Rajinikanth is lying in an Intensive Care Unit bed as I type this. He is, it is needless for me to say, one of the most iconic actors in the Indian Film Industry. His impossible stunts, his funny dialogues bordering on the silly, and his unbelievable visual effects all through a film are, in the pith, not what made him the man he is today.

Anybody, you and I included, can cut a speeding bullet in half or score twelve runs in one ball in a game of cricket–on the silver screen. But what made Rajini (as he is popularly known) the star he is today, and what kept him there more importantly, was his character.

Green Lantern theatrical poster is out!

I would not call myself the biggest fan of Green Lantern, but the new film (out on June the 17th) is exciting nonetheless. Personally, I still cannot picture Ryan Reynolds as a superhero after The Proposal (in spite of X-Men Origins: Wolverine and all.) The new poster however shows that the film has something promising to deliver; yet, only time will tell!

I said I experienced satiric haunting!

I’ve heard of haunting yourself to death, but laughing yourself to death is unheard of insofar as you are sitting in a theatre amidst hundreds of shivering anthropological beings, all firm believers in the supernatural. And yet, you will find that you don’t really feel odd: you make the others feel odd.

Last night found me at a theatre nearby, watching what was supposed to be a horror film in some small way. It was called Haunted in what was perhaps the most misleading name this past century (the only other one rivalling it being the Hindi Film Industry.)

The whole two hours and a half were the most stereotypical hours I have ever spent.

Five screenplays to read before you die!

I am a great fan of literary works of various genres: novels, novellas, plays, short stories, screenplays and poems (though I do not fancy poems as much as the other five.)

And we have often seen people giving us definitive lists of the five or ten (or even one-hundred, as we have seen from the American Film Institute,) films to watch before you die; but, inspired from these—and deciding to put my long time habit of reading screenplays of movies I have watched, or am going to watch, into practice—I decided to come up with my own list of screenplays for you to read as soon as you can lay your hands on one.

Hollywood, tailor-made!

It pleases one to no small limit to see all (or at least most) of his favourite actors, director(s) and screenplaywright(s) working on a common project and coming out with what can only be a masterpiece of a film. This coming year looks like its my turn.

Among my favourite actors are (in no particular order) Al Pacino[The Godfather (trilogy,) Scent of a woman, Scarface, S1m0ne,] Marlon Brando [The Godfather, Julius Caesar, A streetcar named Desire,] Robert DiNiro [The Godfather II, Mean Streets, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver,] Johnny Depp [Pirates of the Carribean, Charlie and the chocolate factory, Public enemies, Alice in Wonderland] and Hugh Grant [Four weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, About a boy, Music and Lyrics.] And then my favourite directors are Francis Ford Coppolla [The Godfather,] Martin Scorsese (SKOR-say-zee, many say it wrong!) [Raging bull, Good fellas, Taxi Driver, Shutter Island,] and Stevn Speilberg [Jurrassic Park, Schneider's list.] And not to tire you out, two of my many favourite screen-playwrights are Steven Zaillian [Schindler's list, Mission: Impossible, The Interpreter, American Gangster,] and Eric Roth [Forrest Gump, The Good Shepard, Munich, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.]

Now picture this: Robert DiNiro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci [My cousin Vinny] all starring in a film directed by Martin Scorsese and scripted by Steven Zaillian. Bowled over?

(What appears to be) a very serious treatise on the criminal

The criminal of yesterday is very different from the criminal of today. He walked free like the innocent of today while the criminal of today found himself freely strolling through his prison cell like the innocent man of yesterday. While the police are promptly imprisoning more men to convince the public that they are working, they seem to have overlooked a subtle fact: the unanimously approved rule that it is the guilty who should be imprisoned.

Classical music you never knew you had listened to

I play the violin. I’m no maestro, but I can handle the bow well (but I still cannot play the vibrato!) And this beautiful instrument–which came to me somewhat as a serendipity–has, for some reason, convinced me to spread the word about those great musical masterpieces I listen to everyday. And then I realised people around me hardly ever listen to it. There is no way you can make them listen, but one of the means I just realised was to associate these numbers to some things we are perhaps better aware of than the music itself.

So I sat down and compiled a list of the best pieces which have featured in well-known forms of media, and to which we have probably hummed, all the while not knowing what we were really humming to. The list is in no way exhaustible and it is my humble request that you add to it should you find something I have skipped. And I am aware I have skipped many: these are just those on the top of my list!