Rain, Suspension of Disbelief and Monotony

So the rains have well and truly started in Pune. And, to borrow a quote from Fred Weasley (or George, can't remember which one of the twins said it), I haven't been properly dry since Monday. And just to set things straight, I am not still in the innocent, wondrous phase of adolescence when getting wet in the rain seems to be the most thrilling thing imaginable. Yes, I know, I should've used some common sense and stayed indoors or travelled by a bus, but strange beings that we humans are, I refused all thoughts of obeying the little sensible voice in my head and kept hopping around the city on my bike, getting ridiculously drenched all along. I guess my sense of reason, the one superpower that I like to attribute to myself, has seen better days.

Watched two movies this week (and got drenched on the way to the theatre on both occasions). Ocean's Thirteen is everything that Ocean's Twelve was not - it's witty, easy to understand and entertaining. I know many people didn't like the idea of the gang hatching their elaborate plan for revenge as opposed to personal gain, but somehow I could identify with the plot of Thirteen more than that of Twelve or even Eleven. Ocean's men seem more human and not quite the royally pompous, conniving, swaggering thugs that they were in the first two, and that's all for the good. And besides, any movie that has Al Pacino in it has to be watched at least once, if not for anything else then for his sheer extravagant presence alone. Andy Garcia finally comes into his own in the final instalment of the series, and though the movie misses the star power of Julia Roberts, it is a fine conclusion to a merry, ridiculously unbelievable tale of a bunch of crooks with big ambitions and even bigger resources.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is, like the first part, a perfect example of how to make a pure popcorn movie. The film's small length (it barely crosses the 90-minute mark), the likable stars (notwithstanding the fact that at times the movie seems, and annoyingly so, nothing more than a showcase of two of Hollywood's most good-looking actors, Jessica Alba and Chris Evans), the stunning visuals and the total lack of any complexities of plot all combine to make this one of the most enjoyable movies of the year, even if it is not the most thought-provoking one. And oh, that thing called 'suspension of disbelief' would come in really handy while watching this one (and while watching Ocean's Thirteen too, now that I think about it). Nevertheless, for once, a third instalment would actually be welcome.

Wimbledon begins tomorrow, and for the first time in 3 years tongues are wagging about Mr. I'd-like-to-see-anyone-try-to-beat-me-on-grass Roger Federer's ability to take home the most prestigious Slam of them all. Skipping the tournament in Halle, a tournament which he has owned for the past 4 years, may not have been ideal preparation, and after his latest attempt to make history at Roland Garros being thwarted in devastating fashion by Rafael Nadal he does seem to have lost a considerable amount of fire. But hey, he's not known as Mr. I'd-like-to-see-anyone-try-to-beat-me-on-grass for nothing. No one has won five Wimbledons in a row since Bjorn Borg, and if that doesn't bring back the fire in Federer's belly, I don't know what will, considering how little he has left to prove on grass. Justine Henin, meanwhile, is being talked up as the hot favourite among the women, and for some weird reason her victory over Serena Williams at the French has made most people comfortable enough to assume that the Williams sisters will not be major threats at the Championships this year. To these people all I've got to say is: Go fry yourselves. No one has performed as ferociously and as consistently as the Williams sisters on grass in this decade, and after Serena's victory at the Australian Open this year, I seriously can't understand why people like to write her off at every Grand Slam with so much imperiousness. And don't forget Maria Sharapova, Amelie Mauresmo or Jelena Jankovic either - boy, the women's draw seems incredibly competitive when compared with the men's draw. That's the Federer effect for you, French Open victory or no French Open victory. But maybe he'd like to be a little generous and give someone else a chance this year, yes? It's just that a little break in the monotony would suit everyone just fine.

If You're not Cool, You're Not Hot

'Disgusting' is a strong word. So is 'repulsive'. But to be strong is to be effective, as they say (Ok, that's not exactly an actual saying, but it puts my point across well enough). So as I was saying, 'disgusting' and 'repulsive' may be strong words, but it's not at all misplaced to use them to describe the tendency of college students these days to let their lives be wholly and purely dictated by fashion trends, social norms and popularity ratings. You can hardly walk a step in any of the swank, upmarket colleges of today without getting a glaring view of the sickening disease amongst students to entirely conceal their true selves in their ill-advised, and often horribly unsuccessful attempts to pass off as 'cool'. It's quite disturbing, actually. And entirely unnecessary, too. Not to mention astonishingly stupid. But then again, smartness is not something most people pride themselves on.

A lot of the norm-conforming, popularity contest-playing madness amongst the college youth of our country takes inspiration from the not-so-rosy pictures presented in Western fiction, particularly movies like Mean Girls or American Pie. (On a side note, isn't it really really painful that the stuff that we are reduced to taking inspiration from is comprised of such horrors as American Pie?) Anyway, things in the West have reached a stunning extreme, or at least that's what the movies want to portray. Geekiness, gawkiness and gaudiness are unpardonable crimes, the hip American college dude shouts out loud (perhaps here lies the answer to America's befuddling mystery of school shootings?), and the ever-so-impressionable Indian rich brat is only too happy to take that as Law. Talk about naivete. Incredible naivete.

So here were are in the wonderfully happy 21st century, and all that is on an average teenager's mind is how to score points in the college popularity and coolness contests. Following the latest, most bizarre fashion trends, from wearing alarmingly low-waist jeans to sporting appallingly spiked hairstyles works well for most people most of the time. But that's only one area covered. To be well and truly on the path to coolness, one must necessarily talk in 'cool' lingo, never mind how incredibly inane it may sound. I don't know about you, but hearing words like 'dude', 'like', 'awesome', 'rocks', 'totally', 'sucks' or 'man' approximately 23,000 times in a day does drive me just a little crazy. I mean come on, how normal is it for a sentence like, "Dude that is like awesome, like totally awesome dude, seriously man" to be spoken aloud by a human, whose greatest advantage over animals is supposedly having good communication skills?

Swearing and using abusive words in perfectly normal conversations is a great hit too. People who stick to decent, doesn't-make-you-throw-up speech are sissies, apparently. Giving up on studies is another effective weapon in the battle against 'uncoolness'. So is splurging mammoth amounts of your parents' hard-earned money on horribly unhealthy junk food, or even making regular, and often unnecessary, visits to the next-door multiplex. All things traditional must of course be shunned as religiously as possible, and if you don't stock up millions of CDs of those awfully noisy rock bands then you're just not 'happening' enough. Talk about sex as frequently and as loudly as possible, and make dreadful comments about anyone even remotely nerd-looking. Shout a lot. Be as 'bold' (or indecent, depending on what you wish to call it) as you can. Forget your responsibilities. Forget your career. Ignore your parents. Lose your mind. Go down the gutter. Sounds like a nice journey, doesn't it?

Surely there must be a way to avoid all of this horridness? Wait a minute. Can it really be - 'good sense'? Wow, that's a revelation. (It's at times like these that I feel the written word isn't so effective at communication after all - how I regret I cannot let my readers know how fiercely I'm rolling my eyes right now!). It's only about being true to yourself after all. It's amazing how a simple thing like expressing yourself honestly can give you happiness the like of which can't possibly be found in trendy clothes and trashy pop culture. And that's not to mention how easy it becomes to make and keep a few but truly wonderful friends. Ah! The wonders of using good sense!

When Federer Almost Made History, Revisited

Does the No. 1 player in the world, possibly the best player in history, need an urgent lesson on how not to lose a match? Maybe Roger Federer doesn't, but he sure does need to be told by someone, anyone, that he isn't helping his cause towards being unanimously and unarguably hailed as the GOAT by repeatedly failing to mentally turn up for his matches against Rafael Nadal. I'm sorry, but when you convert just one break point out of 17 against a player of Nadal's calibre, and that too on clay, then you're clearly giving out the impression that you're not mentally prepared to win. Throw in 60 unforced errors, and the point is sealed. Quite frankly, and though this may sound a lot like one of Serena Williams's post-loss conferences, all that Nadal had to do today was show up for the match. Federer took care of the rest.

Federer's win over Nadal at Hamburg had caused many optimists to believe that this may be THE year for Federer, the unachievable Grand Slam year. The signs certainly were good. Federer did seem to have finally 'cracked the code' to defeating Nadal on clay, and his matches through the early rounds of the French Open seemed delightfully similar to his early-tournament breezes at the other 3 Slams. He was doing everything right most of the time, and even on the days that he wasn't doing everything right, his sheer determination made sure that he prevailed, most notably in the semi-final against Nikolay Davydenko. The trouble, however, was the fact that most people chose to ignore the assertions by the Nadal supporters that he only lost the Hamburg final because he was genuinely and undeniably fatigued. And today, Federer made sure that the Nadal supporters were well and truly vindicated. I guess we all were too caught up with the mouth-watering possibility that Federer would script an unforgettably historic tale by capturing the Holy Grail of tennis, the calendar Grand Slam. Perhaps we should have expected Federer to be human.

What irritates me most about Federer is his stubborn refusal to listen to tennis experts. Come to the net more often, they all keep saying. Play the slice backhand more frequently, they chant. Be more aggressive, they chorus. Each of these 3 perfectly well-intentioned pieces of advice paid handsome returns when he followed them sporadically in today's match, but the key word here is 'sporadically'. Perhaps it is unwise in any case to give advice to a man who has a habit of firing his coaches and then promptly rampaging around the world winning tournaments by the dozens. But on clay, against Nadal, Federer needs his advisors. And he needs his mental strength too. He needs all the weapons that he can gather to ensure that he doesn't again have as awful a first serve percentage or as regular a display of his characteristic wild shots that go sailing into the crowds off his backhand (and sometimes today, even off his forehand) against Nadal in a French Open final. Heck, at one point his 'audience' shots became so frequent that it seemed possible there was a spectator in the stands who he didn't like. It's just as well that the amiable French crowd found these shots highly entertaining.

The most that can be said about Federer's performance today was that it was better than his show in last year's final. And considering how absolutely horrendous his performance last year was, that isn't saying much. His supporters keep insisting that he's 'getting closer' to finding the formula to win the French, but the hard truth is that time is running out on him. He'll be 26 this year, and Nadal seems all gung-ho about winning the French Open for the next 6-7 years. If anything, today was sort of a regression for Federer. Nadal was clearly physically drained towards the end of the match, and yet he seemed to have no problems holding his serve or capitalising decisively on Federer's errors in the big points. As I said earlier, Federer just wasn't there mentally, and as much as this sounds like Serena Williams, it probably is the truth. And that's not very comforting.

Meanwhile, in an eerie parallel to Nadal's success story, Justine Henin-Hardenne coasted to a third successive Roland Garros triumph, proving once and for all that she IS the best women's player on clay by a long distance. Maria Sharapova did well to reach the semis, but once there she actually looked like a 'cow on ice', losing with astonishing ease to the new Serb sensation, Ana Ivanovic. Is women's tennis being taken over by eastern Europe and Russia? Ivanovic, Vaidisova, Kuznetsova, Jankovic, Dementieva, Hantuchova, even Sharapova (if you count the fact that she was born in Russia)...the list is almost endless. Where are the Americans and the western Europeans, you ask? I don't know about the western Europeans, but the Americans have precisely one player still competitive enough to pose a serious challenge in the Slams, and that player is Serena Williams. The rest, including Venus Williams and Andy Roddick, should probably look in their mirrors and ask themselves thousands of unanswerable questions.

Right then. So we now move to the green pastures of Wimbledon. Mauresmo, Serena and Sharapova should be the favourites in the women's draw. As for the men's, we should perhaps give Federer a breather and concede that he is human after all. I'm sorry, did I say human? I apologize. 4 complete years, not a single loss on grass. Forget everything that happened today, Federer is going to romp through the greatest Slam of them all. Seriously, God help anyone who comes in Federer's way. And I hope Nadal does come in Federer's way.

Movies, Work, etc. etc.

Ahem. I never thought that the price of a professional job would be going blog-less for a month. And that's not the only handicap either; in fact, for some, that would actually rank among the least annoying of the miseries brought upon them by the headsore called work. Take, for instance, the fact that you are made to intermittently suffer positively awful spells of exhaustion, or that you are reduced to regularly having magnificently bland food disguised as lunch, or, the most painful misfortune of all - that you are forced to cut down on your sleep! So the real question at the end of the day is - is the money worth it? To be very truthful, no amount of money can ever be worth all that, but being truthful went out of fashion a century ago. So yes, the money's worth it. But it isn't really worth it. Okay, my rant is getting really incoherent now. I must move on to less muddled things.

Watched three movies in the last week. Cheeni Kum is surprisingly funny, it has no airy pretensions about it and succeeds at bringing out the innate humor in an unconventional love story. Amitabh Bachchan is in his element after a long time, and Paresh Rawal is dependably funny as always. But it is Tabu, that long-forgotten actress of sparkling caliber, who holds the film together with her wonderful naturalness. It's amazing how sometimes a simple role that doesn't require too many histrionics or intense emotions can make us appreciate the real quality of an actor. It happened with Kareena Kapoor in Omkara, with Rani Mukherjee in Bunty Aur Babli, with Akshaye Khanna in Dil Chahta Hai, and if I may dare to club him with Bollywood actors, with Al Pacino in the Godfather. I guess it's just one of the things that make movie-watching such a delightful experience.

Shrek The Third was probably my most anticipated movie of the year (well okay, my second most anticipated movie of the year - Harry Potter 5 grabs top spot without any kind of a fight). But the movie turned out just good - not outrageously funny, not amazingly pleasant, and not even completely devoid of boring moments. It would've been an exhilarating joy-ride if it weren't for the inescapable feeling of repetitiveness about the humour - there's only so many times you can roll on the floor with laughter at Eddie Murphy's Donkey jokes. And while I'm definitely not among those who hate Justin Timberlake with a passion, his Artie was downright uninteresting and even a little irritating. Mike Myers, Antonio Banderas and Cameron Diaz continue with their good work, but the whole film has a little staleness to it which not even the novel subplot involving the feelings of the perennially hated fairytale villains and the whole bit about how fairytale heroines can be anorexic party-loving bitches when away from the public glare can erase.

And that brings me to the movie that dwarfs all others in terms of scale, budget, length, box office returns and a whole lot of other things. The title of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End is not the only thing that is excessively long about it. The official runtime of the movie is 2 hours and 48 minutes, and that beats most of Bollywood's overlong melodramas by a distance. Everything about the movie is enormous - the star cast, the budget (it reportedly cost a whopping 300 million dollars to make), the action sequences, even the supernatural goddess Calypso. Personally, I enjoyed every single second of the movie - I'm a die-hard Pirates fan, I've been one ever since Captain Jack Sparrow said, "But why is the rum gone?". It's infinitely better than Dead Man's Chest, and comes very close to being as good as The Curse of The Black Pearl, which is saying quite something. I'm sure plenty of people hated the movie heartily, and perhaps even more were left thoroughly confused by the many twists, turns and double-crossings in it, but that is wholly understandable for a trilogy that evokes as sharply divided reactions as does Pirates. The film actually looks as expensive as 300 million dollars, and is a grand epic in every sense of the term. The added bonus is, of course, that it is a very funny epic. Johnny Depp, Bill Nighy and Geoffrey Rush are, expectedly, the stand-out performers, but the support cast does well too. The CGI is ridiculously breathtaking and the fight sequences are going to end up as the defining cinematographic achievements of the decade. Admittedly, the pointless Calypso sub-plot, the frustrating complexity of the Dutchman curse and, of course, the somewhat tiring length of the movie do sour things a bit. But otherwise, it is a very worthy finale to a fantastic series and is quite easily the best movie of the year. Yet. Harry Potter 5, remember?