![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dangermousieThis article annoyed the heck out of me:
NEW YORK (AP) -- J.K. Rowling has a request for those with inside dirt on her seventh and final Harry Potter book: Please keep it to yourself.
"We're a little under three months away, now, and the first distant rumblings of the weirdness that usually precedes a Harry Potter publication can be heard on the horizon," Rowling wrote on her Web site Monday.
"I want the readers who have, in many instances, grown up with Harry, to embark on the last adventure they will share with him without knowing where they are they going."
The author's comments came in response to an April 28 editorial by a leading Potter fan site, http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org, which noted that it had been receiving "spoiler" e-mails -- and expected many more -- alleging advance knowledge of the book's contents.
Rowling has said two major characters will die in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," which comes out July 21. Although the Potter books are released under tight security, copies often are obtained before the publication date.
"If Harry dies, we don't want to know about it until J.K. Rowling decides to tell us," Leaky Cauldron webmaster Melissa Anelli wrote. "And if you decide to tell us before that, you'll incur the wrath of a staff of almost 200, most of whom have been waiting almost 10 years for these final revelations and can NEVER get back the moment you rob by spoiling them.
"That's some wrath right there. We own pitchforks, hot wax and feathers. And we're not afraid to use them."
On Monday, Rowling seconded the fan site's plea.
"Some, perhaps, will read this and take the view that all publicity is good publicity, that spoilers are part of hype, and that I am trying to protect sales rather than my readership," Rowling wrote on http://www.jkrowling.com. "However, spoilers won't stop people buying the book, they never have -- all it will do is diminish their pleasure in the book."
More than 300 million copies have sold of the previous six Potter books. "Deathly Hallows" has more than 1 million pre-orders on Amazon.com alone.
WTF? I don’t even want spoilers for the seventh book but someone people love them and want them so what is wrong with that, as long as they are properly labeled so people who don’t want them won’t be spoiled? Next you’ll tell me I am not allowed to read the back of the book first.
In gleeful news though? Life in a Metro that I saw last night was AWESOME.
I just saw Metro, an Indian (it’s not really Bollywood) movie about interlocking lives of a number of denizens of Mumbai.
I would highly recommend it to anyone, even people who normally would not like ‘Bollywood.’ It is a short movie (clocking just a bit over two hours), with no musical dance numbers, gorgeous fast editing, and rather realistic characters. I could see it playing at the local art house, easily. Oh, and the soundtrack is to die for and so are the performances.
The movie has four or so stories, but they all interconnect. What I love the most are the performances because you need to have good performances in a movie like this.
Story 1 follows Kay Kay Menon and Shilpa Shetty, a couple who has been married for nine years and to say that ‘they had lost that loving feeling’ would be to put it mildly. An affluent, upper-middle-class couple with a young child, they invite friends over every night so they won’t have to spend time alone.
KK neglects his wife in favor of an affair with his subordinate at work, Neha, a girl twenty years his junior, but even before Shilpa finds this out, there is a barrier between them, and isolation. There is one memorable scene where KK skips his wedding anniversary for a tryst with his young mistress, leaving his wife to entertain at home that is just…argh.
And yet I have to give kudos to KK because he is portraying a guy who is, by any definition, a king of jerks. He cheats on his wife and thinks nothing of it, he is brutal to Neha when she dares to point out that he treats her as a guilty secret, he blackmails Sharman Joshi’s character (an employee, about him more later as it is story 2) into getting his way etc etc. And yet, somehow, he is not a cartoon villain. You feel shadows and remnants of a nice person, of why Shilpa might have liked him at one point. Something of a spirit remains, mainly in interactions with his daughter.
You feel for Shilpa, someone whose beauty masks her utter fragility and who is ultimately quite alone. In fact, this story is perhaps the most ambiguous because it does not end happily (like two others) or unhappily (like the Dharmendra-Nafeesa Ali track, my favorite) but somewhere in realistic, unsatisfactory middle.
You see, Shilpa ends up meeting a man. Shiney Ahuja is a struggling actor (with his own failed marriage. He is separated from his wife) and they are perfect for each other. For the first time in years, Shilpa is with a man who appreciates her, who she likes, who se finds desirable (btw, as a straight girl? Shiny Ahuja? YUM).
But I think Shilpa’s tragedy is that she is too traditional, too conservative to really ever break her marriage unless her SOB husband leaves her first. She is a ‘good girl.’ Her biggest moment of rebellion comes when she comes to Shiney’s flat. I love that scene. They spent the day together and he invited her in (he is staying at a friend’s place) but she bolts, scared. And then, a little time later, Shiney hears a knock on the door and when he opens it, Shilpa came back. I love the scene that follows because it’s just him touching her and there is kissing but it’s such a beautifully shot scene and what you get is that this is the first time she’s felt desired, that she’s desired someone herself for a very very long time and the desperate tenderness is just gorgeous. But the roommate comes back and Shilpa breaks and bolts and as Shiney runs after her, she tells him she can’t, it makes her feel like a slut. I know some people found it OTT but I didn’t…I could see her expressing herself that way.
Anyway, at the end, she finds out about her husband’s infidelity (first through his cell phone message, and I love the quiet way she reacts) and then when he admits it mistakenly thinking her sister told her what she’s seen. The irony is that the husband expects to be forgiven for two years (!!!) of cheating but when she admits a five week relationship, no *** involved, he goes ballistic. At the end of the movie he comes back because Neha has finally dumped him and Shilpa? Takes him back (she sees Shiney for one last time saying she will miss him and that is the end). That is realistic of course, and left me with a lump in my throat. I love the last image of that story. Shilpa in a parked car, feeding her daughter, very maternal, and she sees Shiney walk by, and you can feel the longing and she wants to roll the window down and then KK gets into the car, smiling, with food for his wife and child and she smiles back, and yes she is trapped but is there any doubt she would never leave? I think it’s fitting punishment for KK to have a wife whose heart is not his any more.
Story 2 (my favorite) centers around the elderly former dance teacher of Shilpa now living in an old folks home (played by Nafeesa Ali). One day she gets a letter from Amol (Dharmendra), her first love, someone she hasn’t seen for 40 years. Dharmendra is ill. Dying. And he wants nothing more than to spend the last years of his life with her. Their love story broke off somehow, years ago, and Nafeesa went on to marry, have kids, grandkids. Yet they never really forgot each other and their first meeting scene made me cry, with the looks on their faces.
It also made me realize how much I love Dharmendra and how much I missed him on screen. He is awesome.
She is sitting on the platform she used to sit on, waiting for him, and she sees him…on a different one. And he climbs down from the platform, crossing the tracks, to get to her.
It’s the last love as well as first love now, and I love all the scenes with them. I love that they ‘elope’ (because her son doesn’t want to have her leave), I love the touch of her putting on lipstick to look pretty for him (and yes, she has grey hair and wrinkles, so what, says the movie) I love everything. This movie is full of physical tenderness (Shiney and Shilpa, Irffan and Konkona on the roof etc etc) but my favorite is the scene where she invites him to bed with her. And they hold each other and they kiss and it’s awkward and a bit careful (they are not used to each other, they are old) but it made me cry. I love the way they wake up, and he is ready to make tea, and he is all sleepy and very comfortable. And of course, ironically, it is she who dies first, she suffers a heart attack the next morning. The scene in the ambulance, his trying to reassure her it will be OK, but they end up snarled in traffic and the scene of Dharmendra jumping out and trying to get the traffic to disperse, cajoling, arguing, begging is probably my favorite in the movie. It doesn’t work of course and she dies.
Is it something in my eye? Must be.
Of course, this whole thing makes Shilpa’s younger sister, played by the awesome Konkona Sen Sharma realize something. She loves the oddball, not handsome, middle-aged Irffan Khan. Now if only it wasn’t the day of his wedding.
Yup, story number 3.
KSS is almost an old maid and she is looking at dating matrimonial services. One of the candidates she meets is Irffan Khan, a middle aged oddball she crosses off the list because he is ‘x-raying’ her with his eyes the whole time.
But circumstances throw them together. He helps her get a new job, he teaches her to let out her frustration (in the movie’s most memorable scene: they are on the roof and he teaches her to scream). And KSS has a lot of frustration: her sister’s marriage is in shambles, her roomie is a suicidal mess who is having an affair with KSS’s brother in law, and oh yeah, her boyfriend turned out to be gay, using her as a cover. KSS and Irffan (who finally found an arranged bride) become friends and their conversations are the highlight of the movie. So is her finally realizing something that’s been staring her in the face for weeks, and crashing the wedding and telling him ILY (he goes ‘what’ and she yells ‘go to hell’ and runs off, heh) and him chasing after her and happy reunions. In the ladies’ compartment of the train. Heeee.
Story 4 follows KK’s young mistress Neha (played by Kangna Raut) and Rahul (Sharman Joshi, adorable in a rumpled nerd kind of way. I just want to squish him). It’s a take on the famous Wilder movie The Apartment, transplanted. It’s nowhere near as good as the Wilder masterpiece (one of my Top 10 movies, actually) but it’s still good. Rahul wants to win the rat race and it’s sort of hard to do working as he does in a call center. Luckily for him, he has a gorgeous apartment he takes care of for his absent uncle and all the managers use it for trysts with their mistresses, and in return they put in good words for promotions.
I was impressed by how Rahul and Neha, despite their questionable actions, came across as somehow innocent. Neha is a lost little girl (who finally realizes by the end of the movie that she should go for the good guy) and Rahul is still somehow a dreamer (he wants to have enough $$$ to open a restaurant that is his father’s dream).
Rahul thinks he hits the jackpot when the big boss KK wants the keys and so promotes him to middle manager. Only to find out of course that the boss’ mistress is the girl he’s been pining for: Neha. He comes home one day to discover she tried to kill herself (KK was being his charming self to her etc etc) and he takes her in and they get closer. And at the end, he discovers his spine and his principles and quits his job, giving up everything, because he does not want to be a party to this any more. On finding this out, Neha ditches KK (yessss!) and I love the scene when she runs after him and they reunite at the train station. Awwwww.
NEW YORK (AP) -- J.K. Rowling has a request for those with inside dirt on her seventh and final Harry Potter book: Please keep it to yourself.
"We're a little under three months away, now, and the first distant rumblings of the weirdness that usually precedes a Harry Potter publication can be heard on the horizon," Rowling wrote on her Web site Monday.
"I want the readers who have, in many instances, grown up with Harry, to embark on the last adventure they will share with him without knowing where they are they going."
The author's comments came in response to an April 28 editorial by a leading Potter fan site, http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org, which noted that it had been receiving "spoiler" e-mails -- and expected many more -- alleging advance knowledge of the book's contents.
Rowling has said two major characters will die in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," which comes out July 21. Although the Potter books are released under tight security, copies often are obtained before the publication date.
"If Harry dies, we don't want to know about it until J.K. Rowling decides to tell us," Leaky Cauldron webmaster Melissa Anelli wrote. "And if you decide to tell us before that, you'll incur the wrath of a staff of almost 200, most of whom have been waiting almost 10 years for these final revelations and can NEVER get back the moment you rob by spoiling them.
"That's some wrath right there. We own pitchforks, hot wax and feathers. And we're not afraid to use them."
On Monday, Rowling seconded the fan site's plea.
"Some, perhaps, will read this and take the view that all publicity is good publicity, that spoilers are part of hype, and that I am trying to protect sales rather than my readership," Rowling wrote on http://www.jkrowling.com. "However, spoilers won't stop people buying the book, they never have -- all it will do is diminish their pleasure in the book."
More than 300 million copies have sold of the previous six Potter books. "Deathly Hallows" has more than 1 million pre-orders on Amazon.com alone.
WTF? I don’t even want spoilers for the seventh book but someone people love them and want them so what is wrong with that, as long as they are properly labeled so people who don’t want them won’t be spoiled? Next you’ll tell me I am not allowed to read the back of the book first.
In gleeful news though? Life in a Metro that I saw last night was AWESOME.
I just saw Metro, an Indian (it’s not really Bollywood) movie about interlocking lives of a number of denizens of Mumbai.
I would highly recommend it to anyone, even people who normally would not like ‘Bollywood.’ It is a short movie (clocking just a bit over two hours), with no musical dance numbers, gorgeous fast editing, and rather realistic characters. I could see it playing at the local art house, easily. Oh, and the soundtrack is to die for and so are the performances.
The movie has four or so stories, but they all interconnect. What I love the most are the performances because you need to have good performances in a movie like this.
Story 1 follows Kay Kay Menon and Shilpa Shetty, a couple who has been married for nine years and to say that ‘they had lost that loving feeling’ would be to put it mildly. An affluent, upper-middle-class couple with a young child, they invite friends over every night so they won’t have to spend time alone.
KK neglects his wife in favor of an affair with his subordinate at work, Neha, a girl twenty years his junior, but even before Shilpa finds this out, there is a barrier between them, and isolation. There is one memorable scene where KK skips his wedding anniversary for a tryst with his young mistress, leaving his wife to entertain at home that is just…argh.
And yet I have to give kudos to KK because he is portraying a guy who is, by any definition, a king of jerks. He cheats on his wife and thinks nothing of it, he is brutal to Neha when she dares to point out that he treats her as a guilty secret, he blackmails Sharman Joshi’s character (an employee, about him more later as it is story 2) into getting his way etc etc. And yet, somehow, he is not a cartoon villain. You feel shadows and remnants of a nice person, of why Shilpa might have liked him at one point. Something of a spirit remains, mainly in interactions with his daughter.
You feel for Shilpa, someone whose beauty masks her utter fragility and who is ultimately quite alone. In fact, this story is perhaps the most ambiguous because it does not end happily (like two others) or unhappily (like the Dharmendra-Nafeesa Ali track, my favorite) but somewhere in realistic, unsatisfactory middle.
You see, Shilpa ends up meeting a man. Shiney Ahuja is a struggling actor (with his own failed marriage. He is separated from his wife) and they are perfect for each other. For the first time in years, Shilpa is with a man who appreciates her, who she likes, who se finds desirable (btw, as a straight girl? Shiny Ahuja? YUM).
But I think Shilpa’s tragedy is that she is too traditional, too conservative to really ever break her marriage unless her SOB husband leaves her first. She is a ‘good girl.’ Her biggest moment of rebellion comes when she comes to Shiney’s flat. I love that scene. They spent the day together and he invited her in (he is staying at a friend’s place) but she bolts, scared. And then, a little time later, Shiney hears a knock on the door and when he opens it, Shilpa came back. I love the scene that follows because it’s just him touching her and there is kissing but it’s such a beautifully shot scene and what you get is that this is the first time she’s felt desired, that she’s desired someone herself for a very very long time and the desperate tenderness is just gorgeous. But the roommate comes back and Shilpa breaks and bolts and as Shiney runs after her, she tells him she can’t, it makes her feel like a slut. I know some people found it OTT but I didn’t…I could see her expressing herself that way.
Anyway, at the end, she finds out about her husband’s infidelity (first through his cell phone message, and I love the quiet way she reacts) and then when he admits it mistakenly thinking her sister told her what she’s seen. The irony is that the husband expects to be forgiven for two years (!!!) of cheating but when she admits a five week relationship, no *** involved, he goes ballistic. At the end of the movie he comes back because Neha has finally dumped him and Shilpa? Takes him back (she sees Shiney for one last time saying she will miss him and that is the end). That is realistic of course, and left me with a lump in my throat. I love the last image of that story. Shilpa in a parked car, feeding her daughter, very maternal, and she sees Shiney walk by, and you can feel the longing and she wants to roll the window down and then KK gets into the car, smiling, with food for his wife and child and she smiles back, and yes she is trapped but is there any doubt she would never leave? I think it’s fitting punishment for KK to have a wife whose heart is not his any more.
Story 2 (my favorite) centers around the elderly former dance teacher of Shilpa now living in an old folks home (played by Nafeesa Ali). One day she gets a letter from Amol (Dharmendra), her first love, someone she hasn’t seen for 40 years. Dharmendra is ill. Dying. And he wants nothing more than to spend the last years of his life with her. Their love story broke off somehow, years ago, and Nafeesa went on to marry, have kids, grandkids. Yet they never really forgot each other and their first meeting scene made me cry, with the looks on their faces.
It also made me realize how much I love Dharmendra and how much I missed him on screen. He is awesome.
She is sitting on the platform she used to sit on, waiting for him, and she sees him…on a different one. And he climbs down from the platform, crossing the tracks, to get to her.
It’s the last love as well as first love now, and I love all the scenes with them. I love that they ‘elope’ (because her son doesn’t want to have her leave), I love the touch of her putting on lipstick to look pretty for him (and yes, she has grey hair and wrinkles, so what, says the movie) I love everything. This movie is full of physical tenderness (Shiney and Shilpa, Irffan and Konkona on the roof etc etc) but my favorite is the scene where she invites him to bed with her. And they hold each other and they kiss and it’s awkward and a bit careful (they are not used to each other, they are old) but it made me cry. I love the way they wake up, and he is ready to make tea, and he is all sleepy and very comfortable. And of course, ironically, it is she who dies first, she suffers a heart attack the next morning. The scene in the ambulance, his trying to reassure her it will be OK, but they end up snarled in traffic and the scene of Dharmendra jumping out and trying to get the traffic to disperse, cajoling, arguing, begging is probably my favorite in the movie. It doesn’t work of course and she dies.
Is it something in my eye? Must be.
Of course, this whole thing makes Shilpa’s younger sister, played by the awesome Konkona Sen Sharma realize something. She loves the oddball, not handsome, middle-aged Irffan Khan. Now if only it wasn’t the day of his wedding.
Yup, story number 3.
KSS is almost an old maid and she is looking at dating matrimonial services. One of the candidates she meets is Irffan Khan, a middle aged oddball she crosses off the list because he is ‘x-raying’ her with his eyes the whole time.
But circumstances throw them together. He helps her get a new job, he teaches her to let out her frustration (in the movie’s most memorable scene: they are on the roof and he teaches her to scream). And KSS has a lot of frustration: her sister’s marriage is in shambles, her roomie is a suicidal mess who is having an affair with KSS’s brother in law, and oh yeah, her boyfriend turned out to be gay, using her as a cover. KSS and Irffan (who finally found an arranged bride) become friends and their conversations are the highlight of the movie. So is her finally realizing something that’s been staring her in the face for weeks, and crashing the wedding and telling him ILY (he goes ‘what’ and she yells ‘go to hell’ and runs off, heh) and him chasing after her and happy reunions. In the ladies’ compartment of the train. Heeee.
Story 4 follows KK’s young mistress Neha (played by Kangna Raut) and Rahul (Sharman Joshi, adorable in a rumpled nerd kind of way. I just want to squish him). It’s a take on the famous Wilder movie The Apartment, transplanted. It’s nowhere near as good as the Wilder masterpiece (one of my Top 10 movies, actually) but it’s still good. Rahul wants to win the rat race and it’s sort of hard to do working as he does in a call center. Luckily for him, he has a gorgeous apartment he takes care of for his absent uncle and all the managers use it for trysts with their mistresses, and in return they put in good words for promotions.
I was impressed by how Rahul and Neha, despite their questionable actions, came across as somehow innocent. Neha is a lost little girl (who finally realizes by the end of the movie that she should go for the good guy) and Rahul is still somehow a dreamer (he wants to have enough $$$ to open a restaurant that is his father’s dream).
Rahul thinks he hits the jackpot when the big boss KK wants the keys and so promotes him to middle manager. Only to find out of course that the boss’ mistress is the girl he’s been pining for: Neha. He comes home one day to discover she tried to kill herself (KK was being his charming self to her etc etc) and he takes her in and they get closer. And at the end, he discovers his spine and his principles and quits his job, giving up everything, because he does not want to be a party to this any more. On finding this out, Neha ditches KK (yessss!) and I love the scene when she runs after him and they reunite at the train station. Awwwww.
