Life, the Universe and .....

Tarsem Singh's new film, The Fall, opens and closes with the second movement of Beethoven's 7th Symphony. That alone was enough for me. Lovely imagery and glorious music.

I am suffering from Beethoven second movement syndrome - Howards End taunted me with its use of 2nd movement of Beethoven's 5th Symphony. Months after watching that passable film, I was still humming the 2nd movement. Now, I can not get the 7th Symphony-2nd movement out of my head. It's just playing in a loop accompanied by hallucinogenic images.

The Fall is a movie piggybacking on its bookends. Tarsem made this movie in two dozen countries (the list of shooting locations was never ending, you will notice if you sit through the end credits) over a course of more than four years (He hasn't made a movie since his debut - The Cell). He put in his own money into making this movie. It's painful to see such a labour-of-love going wrong. Most of the dazzling scenes are completley unnecessary, and could be enjoyed only for their visual splendour if seen on a big screen. I knew it before hand, that's why I saw it at Landmark. Landmark seems to be imitating Arclight, bringing state-of-art projectioning and audio system to the westside. Picture and note perfect, if only the movie were good as well.



The Edge of Heaven has a better title in German - On the Other Side.

I have recorded Fatih Akin's Head-On, his earlier critically acclaimed movie, on TV, but never got around to watch it. And his next movie is now in theatres. I caught the preview early last week.

When a movie punctuates its subparts rather ominiously - "Yetel's Death", "Lotte's Death" - and still manages to deliver despite giving away the plot elements, then you've got nothing to complain about. Right? But, I do. It's a nice and gripping movie, no doubt, but has heavy undertones of the triptych style of Alejandro Gonzalez Inaritu (psasi rules, he almost got Alejandros's name right without looking up :)). Instead of Mexico (or globe-spanning Morocco/Japan/Mexico), we have Germany and Turkey, and the characters taking strides across the borders and the cultures.

reprise had me curious. It could be that it is set in Oslo, or it could be that it's a movie about two authors, or it could be that I can not name more than a few movies from the Nordic region (could you?) I can not pin point how I took notice, but I started reading about it and ended up with this artcle in NYT.



And Mishima mentioned in the article caught my attention next.
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“One day he mentioned that Paul Schrader’s ‘Mishima’ was one of his favorite films,” Mr. Trier said. “And then we started talking about Godard, and we sort of became instant best friends.”
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Wait, Mishima? Google, Oh he is an author, Search Netflix, Ah, it's available on Netflix, add to the queue, move on - standard operating procedure.

A few hours later when I was sitting at the cafe, idling and checking my mail, a little reminder from LACMA found its way into my inbox - they are organizing a tribute to Leonard Schrader and showing "Mishima: A life in four chapters" this Friday. What are the odds of that happening?! Very less, if you live in LA, when it comes to movies. :)

I am, of course, looking forward to Mishima this Friday and reprise opening next week in LA.

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There is a moment in "I'm going Home" - one of the 5 Manoel De Oliviera's films I saw during the tribute that ran at the Billy Wilder's theatre by the UCLA Film Archive - where the lead character having been hit by a rather later life tragedy is trying to reconstruct his life in Paris. He tries to go on with his routine life, dines at a cafe daily, windowshops through Parisian streets after the lunch. Anything to keep his mind off.

And one day he walks past a street side art gallery, and immediately walks back to the window. His gaze and that of camera lingers on one particular painting, for quite a while.



I loved the painting, particularly when I saw it for the first time on the BIG screen, a close-up shot. I didn't know that it was a famous painting, I didn't know that it sells more posters and postcards than any other painting in UK. I wanted to remember the words written at the bottom of the painting - Jack Vettriano, so that I could look it up later.

I, of course, forgot those words until today when I saw the same painting in one of the LJ user's icons in backpackers LJ community.

I was thrilled at the coincidence.

The painting is - "The Singing Butler" by Jack Vettriano.

"Paris is a real trompe-l'aeil, a magnificent stage-setting inhabited by four million silhouettes. Nearly five million at the last census? Why, they must have multiplied. And that wouldn't surprise me. It always seemed to me that our fellow citizens had two passions: ideas and fornication. Without rhyme or reason, so to speak. Still, let us take care not to condemn them; they are not the only ones, for all Europe is in the same boat. I sometimes think of what future historians will say of us. A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers. After that vigorous definition, the subject will be, if I may say so, exhausted."

      -- "The Fall" by Albert Camus.

"Everybody does Yoga, only to boast about it later," says Craig Ferguson.

I do Yoga!

Go figure.

I am a bit motivated by my desire to start my daily routine early in the morning, so that I could get off early, and do all the nerdy things that one could in Westwood, near UCLA campus.

Plus, I need to address my back pain.

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To build a better back, most experts agree, you need a solid core. "The core" is one of those areas of the body that coaches and athletes refer to constantly but few people can accurately locate. "It's not just the abdominal area, as many people think, " says Vijay Vad..... "To really include all of the elements that move and stabilize the spine, you have to go from your knees to your nipples. That's the core."

The muscles, ligaments and tendons that make up the elaborate muscle system provide rigging for the spine. The rectus, transverse and oblique abdominals, for instance -- the big muscles at the front and sides of the spine -- are particularly important in stabilizing the back. So are the less familiar intertranversi, interspinalis and multifidus muscles, which link to the larger abdominal group but which rarely figure in magazine articles about wash board abs. Each of these muscles must be strong and supple if the spine is to remain stable.
      -- NY Times Sports magazine, "Play"
===

Having loosely defined the core - Knees to the nipples - I need to strengthen my back core, if I want to continue my destructive lifestyle.

"I drove down Ventura Boulevard in the opposite direction from the bulk of commuters. They were stalled at the lights, a single driver in every car, the cars themselves like steel shells they'd extruded to contain their resentments. They were going to work. I wasn't. After a mile or so, I came to a diner where I sometimes took Clover for breakfast on Sundays, especially if we'd been out the night before, and I pulled into the lot. I bought a newspaper from the machine out front and then I took a copy of the free paper, too, and went on in and settled into a seat by the window. The smell of fresh coffee and home fries made me realize how hungry I was, and I ordered the kind of breakfast I used to have in college after a night of excess -- salt, sugar, and grease, in quantity - just to open my pores. While I ate, I made my way through both newspapers, item by item, because this was luxurious, kingly, the tables clean, the brightly lit and warm to the point of steaming with the bustle of the waitresses and the rain at the window like a plague. Nobody said a word to me. Nobody even looked at me, except for my waitress. She was middle-aged, wedded to her uniform, her hair dyed shoe-polish black. "More coffee?" she asked for the third or fourth time, no hurry, no rush, just an invitation. I glanced at my watch and couldn't believe it was only nine-thirty."

     -- from the New Yorker story, "The lie," by T.C.Boyle.

On most days, I suppress the urge to skip work.

My favourite author's favourite author wrote a new book - The Elephanta Suite. Three stories set in India. The key words, "set in India," immediately attracted my attention. A traveller author writing about India. And Pico's favourite, to boot. I had to pick up the book.

"As ever, Theroux's portraits of people and places explode stereotypes to exihilirating effect" is the description on the inside-flap.

I had a mixed reaction to these stereotypes. The stereotypes he chose as the main elements for the stories - a wealthy couple exploring spas, a phirang's encounter with prostitutes near Gateway of India, a woman who comes to Bangalore to meet Sai Baba - I didn't care too much for. I have seen/heard of/stayed away from worse during my travels in India. But the other subtle stereotypes he writes about within the stories, his keen observation (he gets it right all the time), and his crisp writing captivated me.

psychelone, make a note.

Hitting on the gas just as you reached your garage door, just because your college favourite band U2 started howling "I will follow" on the radio, just because you couldn't do the same while you were in college, to continue speeding on the streets of LA -- now that's new.

Now, if only I were actually following someone!!

(leaving Bono to mourn for his mom)

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XM LED is on a temporary hiatus. I can no longer hope to catch "Bonzo's Montreux" to brighten my day through station surfing.

Zep-philes, without reaching out to wiki, could you tell which album did this song first feature in?

Thotakoora Khaima!

Now, what's that?

Let's pick it apart. Khaima is coastal Andhra word for Kheema (which, in turn, is the Telangana/Hindi/Urdu word for Ground Mutton). What's Thotakoora, cooked most popularly with lentils as Thotakoora Pappu, called in English? I really don't know. The literal translation is "Leafy Garden Vegetable," and that could be any. Google and wiki give some pointers.

Green Amaranth,
Chinese Spinach,
Pigweed (Eh?).

One of the tricks of cooking ethnic dishes in US is to learn about the nearest replacements that could give the original flavour. Thotakoora Khaima requires, obviously, two key replacements - Thota Koora and Khaima (Ground Mutton) - Duh! Now, don't be too smart and ask me - If you replace both of them, could it still be called ThotaKoora Khaima? Instead, ask me the right question - What are the proper replacements?

As it turns out, Baby Spinach from Trader Joe's is a good alternative for Thotakoora. And, here is the most interesting thing. Ground Turkey could be used instead of Ground Mutton. Rejoice homesick Indian cooks, no need to hunt for the Pakistani grocery stores for ground mutton. Plus, you are eating healthy. Health freaknobs from LA, you too rejoice! Turkey has less fat than Mutton. But, don't over do it. Get 92% fat free turkey, not 100% fat free. Don't forget the basic rule: You need some fat for the curry to taste good.

Mom's recipe: Cook onions to golden brown, add ground mutton, mix in ginger garlic paste, let it cook, and add Thotakoora in the end.

Now, the bastardized version:

(Tip from an aunty and an uncle I made friends with here in LA: Turkey doesn't take as much time as mutton to cook. So, reverse the order.)

1. Cut onions as you would for, let's say, chicken curry.
2. Heat two spoons of oil in a pan, add the onions.
3. Add salt and turmeric powder now, if you belong to onions-cook-fast-with-salt school of thought.
4. Add a few spices for flavour (Two to three cloves and elachi, a few tiny cinnamon sticks; crushed).
5. As the onions are getting cooked, add ginger-garlic paste. Optional, add cut green chillies.
6. Once onions are cooked to golden brown, stir in the baby spinach and let it cook till the leafiness is gone.
7. Add the ground turkey, let it cook for a few minutes.
8. Optional: Add a few spoons of yogurt or two to three spoons of lime juice for the turkey to have some extra water to get properly cooked in.
8. Add desired amount of chilly powder.

Your "Thotakoora Khaima" is ready.

Reused from Cartoonbank.


Exhibit 1: To prove why New Yorker Cartoons are class apart.

With an endless vista like this in front of you, that only thing you could do is drift. For miles.

And miles.

I wanted to head here, Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve, 60 miles North of LA, yesterday. But, I woke up late and my day turned out to be altogether different yesterday. I woke up late today too, but, the by next week the poppies will die, so I made a dash as soon as I got up. Needless to say, it was worth it. What a dramatic change in scenery from yesterday!

With golden-orange poppies in view:



On my way back, with my talent for straying into places entitled for couples and families where I am strictly unwelcome, I got into the Poppy Festival. Got in, promptly got out, not before donating 8 dollars for the welfare of the inhabitants of the city of Lancaster.

Indulgence can take many faces. One of them: Seeking out the best brunch places along the Pacific Coast and have Eggs Benedict. I had a good start, after all, with Cottage in La Jolla.

Today, I headed to Geoffrey's in Malibu, with great views of the Pacific, one of the top 10 brunch places in LA, apparently. Once there, my position as the odd man out among the couples has been ascertained. And I ignored it with cups and cups of black coffee. Among the three benedicts on the menu, I chose the Crab Cake Benedict over the Scotch Benedict (Smoke Salmon) the Geoffrey's is known for, upon the suggestion of the cute waitress. Hey, I am not the first one to make a mistake by going with the cute waitress's suggestion. But, it didn't turn out to be a mistake. It was awesome.

Then I wandered off into the mountains for a hike. A must, especially after such a good breakfast.



Is there a proper word to describe hills like this? No big trees. Landscape smoothly flowing, rolling and rolling.. with yellow hues in Spring with wildflower bloom and golden hues in Summer with the dried grass (which makes these hills so prone to fires).

Rolling Hills?

But that's a city in SoCal.

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UCLA Film Archive has been screening Manoel De Oliveira's movies for a while now. (If you don't know who he is, and if you are film buff, it's time to know now. :)) The series is aptly titled - The talking pictures of Manoel De Oliveira. That's what they do, they talk. And that's why I like them. I caught two of them today, after the hike.



The first one "O dia de desespero" introduced me to Camilo Castelo Branco, Portugal's most famous writer. It's difficult to explain this movie for somebody not familiar with Manoel's filmmaking. It's not a conventional biopic. And I leave it at that.

Or I could make a note of the program notes before it disappears from the site:

"Considered Portugal's greatest 19th century novelist, Camilo Castelo Branco led a life so tumultuous with scandal and passion that Oliveira fondly refers to him as the closest Portuguese equivalent not to Cervantes, but to the character of Don Quixote. O Dia do Desespero traces the last days of Branco's life before encroaching blindness led him to shoot himself in his rocking chair. No conventional biopic, the film's ghostly lighting and breathtaking attention to material objects draws us powerfully into the desperate love affair between the writer and death. One of the film's actors, Luís Miguel Cintra, has commented that in O Dia do Desespero, "the dead things are filmed to speak of the life that they hide. Living actors are filmed to speak of the dead." Ultimately, the state of uncertainty that Oliveira imposes—between actor and character, history and fiction—leads to a film of rare hallucinatory power, one that Randal Johnson calls "perhaps Oliveira's most spectral and phantasmagoric.""



The next one, "I'm going home," is again a typical Manoel movie, meaning inaccessible to general audience, but resonates with its core audience. :)

A long day at work, crashed as soon as I got home. Result: Woke up at 10:30 am while I was supposed to be in office at 9 am. Frantic Rush. Got in the car. Ramones started singing "I wanna be sedated" on XM Lucy, the alternative rock channel.

Exactly, I wanna be sedated. I don't want to do anything. I just want to lay still.

Blink 182 sings next, "Late night, come home. Work sucks, I know."

Sigh!

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I went to a party a few days back, the kind where a bunch of despo chicks¹ get in a room, mix drinks, and start hitting on people of opposite sex randomly, no pattern, no rules. The kind where the usually shy psasi gets carried off for a moment by the general enthusiasm and tries to impress the first cute mexican chick he finds by saying "Hola, Como estas?" and gets shot down, "I am Armenian, I don't speak spanish," and then he retreats to the corner, his favourite spot in a party.

Another bored soul, having forced into this party by his girlfriend, sits next this time and says, "Your friend tells me that you are interested in Anime!". The usual suspects in an anime-conversation ensue. Ghibli, Spirited Away, Cowboy Bebop.. and all. Then he says, "He is a fan of Death Note". Death Note, hah, interesting.



Getting started on a new Anime series is like committing to a marriage. You think "Ah, this is a cool concept" and the next thing you know, you are expected to check out a 12 part manga series, a 37 episode anime TV series, a pair of live action movies, and then a novel.. the never ending vortex of a franchise beast.

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Despo Chick: n. Usually male, in his 30s, single, desperately trying to hookup.

1.

Speaking of &hearts, one more. I'm sure both would have been linked on LJ a gazellion times.

2. The visibility is so clear in the morning today, and I really had to suppress the urge to wander off into the mountains.

3. After 8pm, driving on 405 near Getty/Mulholland/Sunset feels like a high speed car chase. So many vehicles winding through the canyon freeway at 80mph. And only rear-end faint red lights in view. Exciting, and dangerous!

4. After two years, I get to be in the Biryani-City. Boy, am I excited!!

I'm not sure if I understand this right!

It's my life, and you have an opinion about it?

Eh?

Now that I have moved out of the Valley, I am getting withdrawal symptoms, particularly from Dan's. Adjusting to a new place in the initial days involves such basic questions as - Where is my nearest grocery store? Where are the good and cheap restaurants I can eat regularly at on days I don't feel like cooking? Where are the good pubs? And, of course, the most important question - Where do I get my pastrami sandwich just as good as that of Dan's.

For the uninitiated, Dan's is in the Valley and specializes in serving one of the best pastrami sandwiches. For the cluelessly uninitiated, pastrami is a popular jewish deli meat, and a good one is not usually served at a chain outfit, but at your local deli store. The trick is to find out which one it is in your area.

I know the ones in the Valley. Dan's is the best, whatever the naysayers may say. Next up is Cavaretta's Italian Store.

Whenever we grab a sandwich at either Dan's or Cavaretta's, my roommate with his hatred for jews-in-hollywood grunts ironically under his teeth with every bite of the sandwich, "Dude, this is so good! And you do know who else likes pastrami, don't you?!"

Brent's in Northridge is also supposed to serve a very good pastrami sandwich, though I never got to validate that claim.

Cut to Westwood, where do I get my pastrami here? The answer - Junior's is one. It's an old 60s establishment serving a very good pastrami in these parts for decades. Not a quick-lunch-sandwich place like Dan's, but more of a deli-cum-restaurant-cum-diner kind of a place. Their pastrami is really good, one of the best I tasted so far. But, it's just pastrami on rye.

Langar's is supposed to serve the best one in entire SoCal. I am yet to head there.

But, I'm glad I've got my answers. :)