Sunday, February 26, 2006
Good Night, and Good Luck : A Review
"There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful. Stonewall Jackson, who knew something about the use of weapons, is reported to have said, 'When war comes, you must draw the sword and throw away the scabbard.' The trouble with television is that it is rusting in the scabbard during a battle for survival."
- Edward R Murrow
In his two most recent movies, George Clooney has ensured that cinema no longer remains a sword rusting in the scabbard during a battle. After watching both "Syriana" and "Good Night, and Good Luck", I've gained a tremendous respect for George Clooney. Clooney wrote the screenplay, directed and also acted in "Good Night, and Good Luck", one of the nominees for the year's best motion pictures at the Oscars.
Next the basics of the plot... "Good Night, and Good Luck" tackles the subject of Senator Joseph McCarthy's communist witchhunts and how a brave CBS television host Edward R Murrow takes on Senator McCarthy. As a former resident of Wisconsin, I'm apalled at the state's choice of a Senator in 1954. Russ Feingold, the current senator from Wisconsin and a UW-Madison grad, is making up for it in good measure nevertheless.
Could Clooney's father, himself a news-anchor, have influenced the choice of subject? I'd like to think so. The parallels to today's political scenario are very hard to miss. I am alluding to the Bush administration's wire-tapping program against suspected Al-Qaeda contacts and how the administration requires no warrants to snoop in on the phone-calls of any resident of America. This connection appears to be a result of happenstance rather than design. No matter how perspicacious Clooney is, he couldn't have divined the existence of a wire-tapping program a year before the matter was brought into the media spotlight.
One of the most brilliant cinematic techniques in the movie was to employ McCarthy to play the role of Senator McCarthy. Quoting IMDB
"Clooney had said that when the movie had undergone test screenings, audience members felt that the McCarthy character was overacting a bit, not realizing that it was the actual McCarthy through archive footage." :)
The decision to make the picture black & white may have been forced as a result of the use of archival McCarthy video. I am not always in agreement with the Academy's choices for the best movies of the year but this one does deserve each one of the 6 nominations. Clooney a la Superman... "Sexiest Man Alive" and a nominee for best director and best screenplay writer of the year and best actor in a supporting role for "Syriana". Membership to a very select club of movie-stars with a worthy message. Hats off!
"There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful. Stonewall Jackson, who knew something about the use of weapons, is reported to have said, 'When war comes, you must draw the sword and throw away the scabbard.' The trouble with television is that it is rusting in the scabbard during a battle for survival."
- Edward R Murrow
In his two most recent movies, George Clooney has ensured that cinema no longer remains a sword rusting in the scabbard during a battle. After watching both "Syriana" and "Good Night, and Good Luck", I've gained a tremendous respect for George Clooney. Clooney wrote the screenplay, directed and also acted in "Good Night, and Good Luck", one of the nominees for the year's best motion pictures at the Oscars.
Next the basics of the plot... "Good Night, and Good Luck" tackles the subject of Senator Joseph McCarthy's communist witchhunts and how a brave CBS television host Edward R Murrow takes on Senator McCarthy. As a former resident of Wisconsin, I'm apalled at the state's choice of a Senator in 1954. Russ Feingold, the current senator from Wisconsin and a UW-Madison grad, is making up for it in good measure nevertheless.
Could Clooney's father, himself a news-anchor, have influenced the choice of subject? I'd like to think so. The parallels to today's political scenario are very hard to miss. I am alluding to the Bush administration's wire-tapping program against suspected Al-Qaeda contacts and how the administration requires no warrants to snoop in on the phone-calls of any resident of America. This connection appears to be a result of happenstance rather than design. No matter how perspicacious Clooney is, he couldn't have divined the existence of a wire-tapping program a year before the matter was brought into the media spotlight.
One of the most brilliant cinematic techniques in the movie was to employ McCarthy to play the role of Senator McCarthy. Quoting IMDB
"Clooney had said that when the movie had undergone test screenings, audience members felt that the McCarthy character was overacting a bit, not realizing that it was the actual McCarthy through archive footage." :)
The decision to make the picture black & white may have been forced as a result of the use of archival McCarthy video. I am not always in agreement with the Academy's choices for the best movies of the year but this one does deserve each one of the 6 nominations. Clooney a la Superman... "Sexiest Man Alive" and a nominee for best director and best screenplay writer of the year and best actor in a supporting role for "Syriana". Membership to a very select club of movie-stars with a worthy message. Hats off!
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Conan's Valentine!
It is a grim world that we live in these days. Violence from the cartoons, climate change, avian flu spreading... you get the picture. I don't particularly enjoy reading the news anymore. I love news that tickles me and yet surprises me. Claude Shannon was so right about the information content of a message. I = log2(1/P) was it ? (Information content of a message is inversely proportional to the probability of it's occurence, for the uninitiated.)
The best such piece of news I read today is about Conan O'Brien, my favourite late night TV host and Finland's president Tarja Halonen meeting up for Valentine's day. Conan found out one day that his viewership in Finland shot up meteorically because he looks like the presidential candidate Tarja Halonen. The resemblance is uncanny and Bollywood-esque too, like a pair of twins separated at the "Kumbh Mela". I couldn't stop laughing the first time I saw a picture of the two together. They do say that there are two people with the exact same face somewhere in the world. I wonder where the other person with my face lives, although for that person's sake I hope she isn't a girl. :)
These days I frequent the Reuters website to read a section that is called "Oddly Enough". It is an assortment of the most bizarre news stories of the day. Yesterday ofcourse it co-incided with the headlines too. I am alluding to the story of Dick Cheney shooting some guy in Texas during a hunting excursion. There's my good deed for the day, helping you while away those precious minutes at work and yet improving your productivity.
It is a grim world that we live in these days. Violence from the cartoons, climate change, avian flu spreading... you get the picture. I don't particularly enjoy reading the news anymore. I love news that tickles me and yet surprises me. Claude Shannon was so right about the information content of a message. I = log2(1/P) was it ? (Information content of a message is inversely proportional to the probability of it's occurence, for the uninitiated.)
The best such piece of news I read today is about Conan O'Brien, my favourite late night TV host and Finland's president Tarja Halonen meeting up for Valentine's day. Conan found out one day that his viewership in Finland shot up meteorically because he looks like the presidential candidate Tarja Halonen. The resemblance is uncanny and Bollywood-esque too, like a pair of twins separated at the "Kumbh Mela". I couldn't stop laughing the first time I saw a picture of the two together. They do say that there are two people with the exact same face somewhere in the world. I wonder where the other person with my face lives, although for that person's sake I hope she isn't a girl. :)
These days I frequent the Reuters website to read a section that is called "Oddly Enough". It is an assortment of the most bizarre news stories of the day. Yesterday ofcourse it co-incided with the headlines too. I am alluding to the story of Dick Cheney shooting some guy in Texas during a hunting excursion. There's my good deed for the day, helping you while away those precious minutes at work and yet improving your productivity.
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
India : A History Book Review
The Maharashtra State Board did a shabby job of teaching me history. It was probably because the curriculum changed when I was in class 8 and we missed out on learning about medieval India. I did pick up "The Discovery of India" by Nehru at one point but I was a little demotivated by his meanderings about the Harappan civilization. It seemed like a layperson's account of Indian history with semi-autobiographical notes rather than a historian's approach to the subject. Nehru talks about travelling to Harappa or meeting RC Banerjee and makes some remarks about Harappa which just sound like opinion rather than fact. I am not the best judge of the quality of the book overall and my father does praise it a lot. Latter parts of the book are likely much better.
I also tried reading a book by Dr. Bhandarkar of the Bhandarkar Oriental Institute and I was immensely pleased by the scientific approach that his book took to the history of Maharashtra. Bhandarkar's book talks about the difficulties of placing events in Indian history and then tells us how the Chinese maintain an impeccable chronological record. So the dates assigned to many events in Maharashtra's ancient history are based on the timing of Huan Tsang and other Chinese travellers' journeys to India. Having read these two books around the same time, I just didn't find "The Discovery of India" compelling enough.
This weekend I decided to learn more about Indian history and scanned just about all the books in that particular section of the Santa Clara City Library. I found a book with photographs from the "Raj" and loved it. It had these pictures of a time long gone, from Maharajas and princes to snake charmers. One of my favourites was a picture of students at Grant Medical College standing in a circle observing a professor dissecting a cadaver.
I also found "India : A History" by John Keay and I have been reading it incessantly ever since. Nehru couldn't have known some of these facts when he wrote his book while he was imprisoned in the Ahmednagar prison. John Keay's opinions seem not unlike those of most educated Indians. I daresay even an Indian couldn't have done a better job. So far I have read the chapters about Harappa, the Vedic Age and Invasions by the Turks and Mongols.
Having grown up in Pune, one always hears descriptions of Shivaji and the Marathas in such superlative terms that the significance of the Maratha achievement fails to make an impact. The fact that Pune was the capital of the Maratha empire that controlled 70% of the landmass on the Indian subcontinent is an incredible achievement. What makes it more noteworthy is the fact that for many 100s of years India was ruled by Islamic invaders who weren't indigenous people. For instance Babur was born in Samarkand in Central Asia. Muhammed of Ghori who defeated Prithviraj Chauhan after having lost to him more than 10 times also ruled the throne of Delhi but was a native of present-day Afghanistan.
ADDENDUM: Actually I take that back. Whether Babur or Muhammed of Ghori were really Indian is a question that can't be answered. Pune is farther away from Delhi when compared to Samarkand and Afghanistan. The only distinguishing feature between the Turks & Mughals when compared to natives in what is today Northern India is religion. Genetically Punjabis are probably closer to Afghanis than South Indians. If you don't understand me never mind. Point I am trying to make here is that nationality or kinship is hard to define. Today the Mughals seem foreign because that's how borders are defined today, but for the 1300s they didn't venture too far from their homelands.
The Maharashtra State Board did a shabby job of teaching me history. It was probably because the curriculum changed when I was in class 8 and we missed out on learning about medieval India. I did pick up "The Discovery of India" by Nehru at one point but I was a little demotivated by his meanderings about the Harappan civilization. It seemed like a layperson's account of Indian history with semi-autobiographical notes rather than a historian's approach to the subject. Nehru talks about travelling to Harappa or meeting RC Banerjee and makes some remarks about Harappa which just sound like opinion rather than fact. I am not the best judge of the quality of the book overall and my father does praise it a lot. Latter parts of the book are likely much better.
I also tried reading a book by Dr. Bhandarkar of the Bhandarkar Oriental Institute and I was immensely pleased by the scientific approach that his book took to the history of Maharashtra. Bhandarkar's book talks about the difficulties of placing events in Indian history and then tells us how the Chinese maintain an impeccable chronological record. So the dates assigned to many events in Maharashtra's ancient history are based on the timing of Huan Tsang and other Chinese travellers' journeys to India. Having read these two books around the same time, I just didn't find "The Discovery of India" compelling enough.
This weekend I decided to learn more about Indian history and scanned just about all the books in that particular section of the Santa Clara City Library. I found a book with photographs from the "Raj" and loved it. It had these pictures of a time long gone, from Maharajas and princes to snake charmers. One of my favourites was a picture of students at Grant Medical College standing in a circle observing a professor dissecting a cadaver.
I also found "India : A History" by John Keay and I have been reading it incessantly ever since. Nehru couldn't have known some of these facts when he wrote his book while he was imprisoned in the Ahmednagar prison. John Keay's opinions seem not unlike those of most educated Indians. I daresay even an Indian couldn't have done a better job. So far I have read the chapters about Harappa, the Vedic Age and Invasions by the Turks and Mongols.
Having grown up in Pune, one always hears descriptions of Shivaji and the Marathas in such superlative terms that the significance of the Maratha achievement fails to make an impact. The fact that Pune was the capital of the Maratha empire that controlled 70% of the landmass on the Indian subcontinent is an incredible achievement. What makes it more noteworthy is the fact that for many 100s of years India was ruled by Islamic invaders who weren't indigenous people. For instance Babur was born in Samarkand in Central Asia. Muhammed of Ghori who defeated Prithviraj Chauhan after having lost to him more than 10 times also ruled the throne of Delhi but was a native of present-day Afghanistan.
ADDENDUM: Actually I take that back. Whether Babur or Muhammed of Ghori were really Indian is a question that can't be answered. Pune is farther away from Delhi when compared to Samarkand and Afghanistan. The only distinguishing feature between the Turks & Mughals when compared to natives in what is today Northern India is religion. Genetically Punjabis are probably closer to Afghanis than South Indians. If you don't understand me never mind. Point I am trying to make here is that nationality or kinship is hard to define. Today the Mughals seem foreign because that's how borders are defined today, but for the 1300s they didn't venture too far from their homelands.
Saturday, February 04, 2006
A White Woman's Perspective on Indian Men
The Courage To Love talks about Dina's experiences with a Pakistani man whom she was involved with for 4 years. It gives us the American girl's perspective into relationships between American women and South Asian men. I know relationships can be pretty hard and especially inter-racial, inter-cultural ones where you have no control over your background.
The Courage To Love talks about Dina's experiences with a Pakistani man whom she was involved with for 4 years. It gives us the American girl's perspective into relationships between American women and South Asian men. I know relationships can be pretty hard and especially inter-racial, inter-cultural ones where you have no control over your background.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
My New Blog
I forgot about this until Navrina visited this new blog today. If you'd like to read poems that I've written in the past please visit
A Time to Rhyme
I am trying to write another poem this week. If I do manage to wordsmith it correctly, I'll post it on both blogs. It is an idea that occurred to me during my move last week. I used to stay at the Hamptons at Cupertino before but now I've actually moved to Santa Clara, a little north of Nvidia. But with the move last weekend I got no time to write the poem.
I'm also going to try to read about iambic pentameter and figures of speech and hopefully improve the quality of my next poem.
