Counting Backwards : A prologue and Chapter 1

With just about Two weeks to go for End sems, and considering the fact that this would be my last chance to hold on to whatever I have left to hold on to to save my face in public, I decided to start the preparations as soon as possible. And to make this one memorable, I decided to start a new Mini Series in my blog. This would be a Countdown to my End-Sems covering What all Eventful happened in these 15 days including what all went inside the very strange Grey matter of mine.

I call it :

Counting Backwards

Before I begin, I should introduce to you some of the charectors U would be encountering while on the way to the D-Day.

Rama *und :

Name : Ramanand Rao, Age 21.

Lives 3 doors next to me, but could be found more often than not in my room.

He looks a bit like a Character Straight out of an anime which have a fat guy who moves around as a sidekick to the main guy, with a large robe. USP of this guy is, he has watched more than 300 movies in the last 10 months. Now this might not seem out of the ordinary to most of the people, who know the type of life people live in IIT Kharagpur ( The people tie the Nupital-Knot with their Computer when they come here, and are in the habit of doing everything, right from friendly chats, arguments, Fights, Sex, Watching movies together, telling the most deep secrets, to fucking them 24X7 till it sometimes chokes to death by the time u reach the end of your life here in KGP.) . But consider this, this guy doesn't have a computer. He watches all the movies in someone else's room. Also, he watches not just any movie. He claims that he doesn't watch the movies the others have watched and liked. He watches the movies which no one have heard of or no one knows about. As he puts it, In his time before IIT, he was not allowed to watch any movies at home. He had not watched a single Hollywood Movie Before Coming here. All he had watched were some Telugu Movies which were shown on the Telly. So, when he came here, he decided to make up for it, which, in the end, resulted in his low GPA.

Also he doesn't buy more than 2 Fags a day but even then, manages to get as many as 8 butts to his lips. COURTESY : Me.

He, more often than not, can be found in my room, sitting on the chair beside mine, rather sitting on the clothes on them, doing...absolutely nothing.

Bhaatu

Name : Anant Singh, Age 24.

My usual Partner in crime (doesn't mean he doesn't hunt alone.). A nocturnal Creature who has got an IQ ranging between 145 and 155, a natural talent in Dramatics, a Shiv-Bhakt( if u know what i mean :) ),an avid music fan and someone who is trying to mug up the Wikipeida.

Lalit:

Ex-G.Sec Maintainence, Nehru Hall of Residence(Considering the HCM has been dissolved after the Nehru-RP row.) The cleanest at heart in the hall, the dirtiest in appearance ( used to spend most of his time in his last year with Nariyal, the Sweeper of Nehru hall as he was the Mainti.), the most hardworking, and the guy with the worst luck.

Since yesterday was as eventful as the days to come, Here is Day 16 for u.

Counting Backwards : 16 days to go

Day begins with me waking up with a head-ache after sleeping at 5 in the morning. With the Alumnis roaming around in the hall, I knew I had no chance to start my Magnanimous Plan today. So decided should Continue my Movie Spree which had started 2 days ago (had already watched 7 movies in 2 days). So started with a movie which me and Rama had left unfinished,

Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window

An Alfred Hitchcock Classic,which rates at no. 13 at the IMDB 250.
Simple story with excellent Cinematography (which I noticed considering my new found interest in movie-making). The story revolves around an army officer, with a broken leg, sitting in front of his BIG window at the back of his apartment peeping into every apartment he can lie his eyes upon, which seemed to be the only mode of enterntainment for this guy, considering this guy had no Television at home, not even a radio!

A maid, prophetizes that he would get into trouble if he continues to act as Peeping Tom,which, as is the norm of most of hitchcock's movies, comes true. This guy finds the lady in the front apartment missing and his husband, quite curiously, packing bags, wrapping saws in newspapers, and going out in the middle of the night and coming back 3 times. The whole story was clear with not even half of the movie gone. And their has to be a dog in each of his movies! This time it was the landlady's dog who sniffed around in the garden and was killed in the middle of the night by someone. Another Mystery to be unravelled by our hero, who shows the Analytical Skills like Jupitor Jones in The Three Investigators.

Though I knew what all was about to follow, I was simply fascinated by the Cinaematography, which, as is the standard of any Hitchcock's movies, is fantastic.

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So, a movie finished before I could brush my teeth. Not a bad start to a day which was see 3 more movies in a row.

the 2nd in row was :

MADAGASCAR

This was one of the finest movies which I have come across, animation non-withstanding. Each character in this movie is original and different from each other. And well...its gud to watch a comedy after an Alfred Hitchcock thriller.

THe story revolves around a steak loving lion (Alex), a Zebra (Marty) who is confused whether he has black stripes over white or white over black, a bossy and the only sensible of the lot Hippo (Gloria) and a Giraffe (Melman) who takes medicines for food. They are the stars in a Zoo in New York. They believe that New York is their Natural Habitat except fot Marty,who wishes to go to the wild on his 10th birthday and all hell breaks loose when his wish comes true. The other charectors include a gang of 4 Penguins, who intend to get out of the zoo and have a mission to go to Antarctica, n actually managing to Hijack a ship and take it there!


Dreamworks does it again.

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It was already dinner time and I had Not even read a cipher of the book I had opened while the movie was going on. So Decided to have dinner and then Do what I should have done till now.

8:40 PM :

Lights on in C-307. I am sitting in front of my table thinking what I should start first.

Knock on the door

Enter Badani

( G.Sec Sports Candidate, Gymkhana elections, 07-08 and now G.Sec Sports Candidate, Nehru Hall elections, 07-08)

Me : Kya hua?
Badani : Aapke wing ka Match hai 11:30 se 2nd years ke saath.

Me : 11:30? ( Thought Process : No use starting to study now...will not finish any topic by that time..)

Badani : Haan...

Me : Ok..baaki wing mein bol de.

Exit Badani

(For those who do not know, Night Cricket by the name of Thunderbolt goes on in Nehru hall and the coveted prize of the winner is bottles of Thunderbolt, hence the name.)

The rest of the time till 11 is spent thinking what should I watch next and
browsing the Web.

Night time post thunderbolt :

After Bowling Figures of 2/10 in 2 overs and 20 runs of my bat in some 15 deliveries(and thinking of starting my cricket career once again), A lost match as a Captain against 2nd years chasing 75 off 8 overs, a Bhaat session on the cricket ground with the alumnis, and 2 packets of Navy Cut in my Pocket, I entered back to my room to find its just 2 AM. So decided to Continue my Movie Spree sans Rama.

The Big Lebowski

A Fantabulous Comedy rated at 174 in IMDB, I watched in amazement and amusement to what this movie had to offer.

The story revolved around one of the laziest guys around, by the name of Jeff Lebowski (He doesn't want to be called by his name. He likes to be called 'The Dude', who has nothing else to do in his life except Bowling. The trouble begins when he gets mistaken for a Millionaire by the same name,who has a porn-star wife. The Whole story begins with 'the dude' going to th millionaire Lebowski to ask him to compensate for the rug on which the guys looking for the millionaire had peed upon. From then on, its a complete roller-coaster ride complete with abduction of the wife, a porn Mafia who want to cut off his 'Johnson', a Daughter of the millionaire who practices strange Yoga techniques to concieve, and in the way, makes 'the dude' have sex with him so that he could be the father to the baby. To top it all, his best problem is a Maniac who points a gun at anybody's head who doesn't follow the rules. All the blocks fall into place in the end, with the climax showng a fight between the Mafia and 'the dude' for $18.75!!

Man..when will they start making movies this good here in India.

Post Lebowski :

About 4 AM..

With n sleep in my eyes, another movie wouldn't hurt. So ended up watching the new added movie on DC, 'Tom and Jerry : The magic ring'.

A not-so-impressive animation with a weak storyline, I fell asleep while watching this one.





Post Mortem :

So, at the end of the day, with 15 days to go for the End Sems, I managed to finish 3 and a quarter of movies and am still to start up on my so-called academic activity.

Points Given for the day : (-4/10)

Stumbled on a 'Firewall'

With nothing to do on a hot friday afternoon, I sat down to watch a movie. Usually I tend to watch movies which are recommended by others, a habit which I have been trying to lose for quite some time. So, this time I decided that I should find something Completely out of the blue. A bit of keyboard work and a few clicks afterwards, I came across this Name 'Firewall'. Sadly Firewall was a movie I had started to watch some months ago but could not cross the 'Village Roadshow pictures' Logo. But with no other choices, apart from a few telugu movies ( and i was in no mood of watching heroes with 38 inch waist fighting with lungis and that too with subtitles!), I Settled for that.

This movie is of directly out of the old recipe book, added with New Generation Masala which I call the new-age Action Movies. It is complete with High-End Technology, A smooth touch of violence with a wee bit of bloodshed added to it. And to top it all, A master of crime, who is Ruthless and Merciless. He even Shoots his teammates if they fail to do what they are told.

The movie is a simple movie of how a few tech guys try to steal some money out of a bank by holding the manager's family hostage and how the manager manages to rescue them. But the whole touch of Village roadshow converts it into a superhero-supervillain fight, with super sophesticated programming done in a matter of hours by taking a video of all the account nos. in the bank going down a monitor, converting the video screen data into real nos. using a program which Harrison Ford,yes, the 67 year old, a bit wrinkled but seeming to have superhuman power of punching men through walls ( they were wooden and old, to add the reality touch.) had written in a matter of 2-3 hours, and then from the account of all those having money more than a certain amount, they will transfer 10,000 dollars from each account into their one. The plot is not over. The kidnappers have sleek Guns and sophesticated gadgets , including the popular pen camera, an audio cable to hear all u speak, some cellphones and thousands of cameras spread all around the city.

Harrison Ford Seems to be a superhero in her own right. Imagine a father of 2 children, punching guys to knock off their teeth, Kill a man with a mixer-jug by hitting him thrice with it, and that too, without remorse..complete with the anger in his face. He even punches people through walls, has a climax fight with the main-villain with jaw breakig blows and a run for the pistol, and then, Kills the villain with a .... believe it or not!!!...an Axe!

The mother, a housewife, sort of telepathically knows what her huband was going to do to rescue them, makes up an elaborate scheme of escaping complete with making dummies out of pillows and then going through the walls and switching off the lights and then trying to escape through the garage. But here too, The villain, played by Paul Bettany, know about their escape and stops them.

There are 2 children in the movie, a 10 year old boy and a 14 year old Girl. The boy, who seems to have inherited his fathers higer intelligance, shows signs of growing up into a superhero himself. The daughter, in her sweats, shows waht it takes to be an ideal daughter and sister.

The whole Climax fight takes place in an old house in a lonesome lake-side, the location of which is not shown on GPS! THe best part was the windows panes, which, all through the fight scenes were shown to be covered with plastic, broke with glass falling when the hero or the villain fell through! A bit or observance revealed that some window panes, on which the hero was supposed to fall, had glass on them, and the rest of them were plastic. The walls broke with complete rectangular blocks of wood falling with the villain. I can't imagine that sort of a stable house with those sort of wood man.. A trench was dug all around the house with an axe right in the middle of nowhere! Clear sky with a full moon was giving a sort of 'Clash of titans' feel.

This is among the very few movies I have watched for complete fun..and well..the unexpectancy level just added to the fun.

Taking normal people out of day to day life, increase the intelligence, power, emotion levels by about 10% in every character, set them in a plot of the 60s, throw in some sophisticated Gadgets and u have a complete Masala movie in your hands.

Now thats what i call Entertainment.