August, September 2015: Films

24.8.2015
Pather Panchali; Satyajit Ray (1955)

Casting. 

25.8.2015
Muzzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai
Detailed post here

2nd September
Hunger: Steve McQueen (2008)

What a film. About 'No Wash' Protests and hunger strikes the political prisoners carries out. Brilliant shot taking. See that long pans and sweeping camera begins with one person and ends with another. The little Bobby visiting the dying Bobby in hospital from the story he narrated to his priest friend. Prepared to die. Everyone was prepared to die. Whatever the cause the conviction is awe inspiring.
Excrement on walls and maggots and the dirt. All filmed in the way it should be. With minimum conversations to hold the attention of viewers. Also in the long conversation that Bobby has with his priest friend everything is filmed in the two shot full shot. Only in the end do we get to see a close up. Building tension that way has been achieved as if effortlessly. Brilliant.

29th September
The Triplets of Belleville; Sylvain Chome (2003)

Animation. About a boy who grows up to be a cyclist and gets kidnapped. His grandmother going in search of him and the way the triplets back then and now were linked to the grandmother's life. Old triplets are very nice too. It is a good thing that it started with their performance which later becomes on TV that the grandmother and grandchild are watching.

Paprika; Satoshi Kon (2006)

Animation film.
What a load of shit. Something like inception. Horrible. In some places it looked like porn. About this woman who can appear in dreams and works as a psychologist in the day. Alter ego sort of thing. Badly made. Crap. 

Mili; Rajesh Raman Pillai (2015)

When i first saw the film's hoardings in Kerala, had wondered why a film named after a woman had big pictures of Nivin Pauli. The film is only about Mili. Didn't like the film.

Sandwich Maker

I hated cheese. So when Sethuvamma got me a sandwich maker (she sometimes feels like buying this i have never asked her for) i was at a loss of what to do with it other than toasting bread. I don't like the usual potato filling sanwiches which Amma nd Sethuvamma made. Trust me, when you are in Kolkata you will hunt down things which don't use aaloo (potatoes) and have just that. Bengalis have their infamous aloos in even their biriyani. I went to some food blogs and saw some sandwich recipes. Most of them had cheese. So then i decided i would make it with cheese and ask Vai Vow to eat it. That is how i made my first sandwich. Egg and cheese sandwich. It was easy as hell to make. I got the recipe from here

A slice of bread, butter it, add your egg in whichever way you like it (i used scrambled egg), a slice of cheese on it, then again buttered bread, all of it goes to the sandwich maker and it will grill it for you. Super cool. I saw that Vai Vow was liking it. I took a chance and had a bite with ketchup. It tasted yum! Did that mean that i had started liking cheese too? I didn't have time to answer those mental questions because i was soon gobbling down the rest of the sandwich. What came out of the sandwich maker was just some great filling breakfast that i had difficulty in stopping myself from making a few more. I had to stop myself because the cheese i bought was so expensive and i couldn't finish it all in a day. I had no idea that cheese was expensive. I used to think that it cost something close to what butter cost.

Sethuvamma made a visit to feed Pinchu (my cat) in the evening and i made her two sandwiches without egg. Even that tasted great. I felt so good. I decided that to make it again on Sunday. This time i would make it for three people, myself, Vai Vow and Sethuvamma. So it would be vegetable sandwich Vai Vow being an egg eating vegetarian and Sethuvamma a fish eating vegetarian. (I don't know how the most ardent non vegetarians like me end up being around people from whose lives meat, fish etc are missing. Sigh)

So on sunday i made egg sandwich with boiled egg, onion, red bell pepper, capsicum (i was taught that green bell pepper alone is called capsicum. Wikipedia says that's not true. Indianism, may be.), carrot, cucumber and mint leaves. What i like the most about vegetarian ingredients is the colour. I love all of them. I spread butter over the slices of bread and put a slice of cheese in between. When it was grilled and out it was just so lovely. Sethuvamma asked me to make an eggless one and i did. I had an eggless one myself. Even that tasted great. I cursed myself for never trying sandwiches ever since i started cooking two years ago. It is just so easy to make and just so filling and good.

With this sandwich incident i have come to realize that cinema doesn't matter after a point. If i were asked to make sandwiches through the day and didn't have to shoot my playback project i would still have been happy i guess. Now that i like cheese i think i should learn how to make cheese as well. (Yes, i am (half) crazy).