Movie time again

Watched 3 movies this week, good ones... each 1 of them.

Lambada - The story of a man who is Kevin - a brilliant maths teacher by the day and Blade - a mystery man who has his Lambada moves & grooves by the night. Blade reaches out to the lesser fortunate and backward kids through his dance and then helps them with their academics after the dance sessions.
When a jealous student exposes his two worlds, Kevin's whole life turns topsy-turvy and in the end its his night class students who help clear his name & prove what a great teacher he is.

The movie concept is in the same league as Dangerous Minds.
Amazing dance sequences and a couple of popular songs in the movie.
Eddie Peck is such a delight to watch :)


Fiddler on the roof - This is such a beautiful movie. A story about the Jews living in the small village of Anatevka. Their lives, their traditions, the hardships that they face. Their mental block towards change and new ideas and finally how the exodus impacts their peaceful lives.

Each character in the movie has played their part so well, it is natural and realistic. The songs are perfectly timed and beautifully performed. For me, the touching moments in the movie are:

• Every time Tevye has to decide if he will agree to his daughters' choice of husbands
• After 25 years of marriage when Tevye asks his wife if she loves him
• Hodel's decision to marry Perchik and when she sings "Far from the home I love"
• Tevye's refusal to go against his faith & allow Chava to marry Fyedka & many more brilliant moments....
  

& finally Cheeni Kum. All that I want to say about this movie is "Very sweet". No masala no non-sense, just real emotions and beautiful acting. I'd love to watch this again :)

Another day, another place...

23rd May 07 was the day of my CTW (Community Team work) project this year. The project I had chosen this time was in relation to Rakum Blind School.

Our project was to buy provisions and vegetables for the school. We were to buy about 700 kgs of rice and 50 kgs of vegetables. We were 12 volunteers for this project. We decided that rather than all of us spending the day shopping, we'd split up such that 1/2 of us went shopping and the other 1/2 went and spent quality time with the children. So, 6 of the volunteers went shopping, the rest of us went to the school.

We reached the school at 9 AM. There were about 150 children there. 30-40 of them were below 12 years and of the remaning we even had 2 students who's given their IAS exam. We started off by giving our introductions, telling the children who we were and why we were there. We then had our breakfast along with the children.

Then it was time for activities to begin. We split the children into 2 groups, based on their age groups. For the small children we had got clay and the first activity was to help them create their clay masterpieces.

For the older children we had the activity of "know your partner better". We paired off the children and gave them a minute to get to know their partner - who they were, where they were from, what thier interests were... Then each of the children got an opportunity to introduce their partner. Initial there was a lot of hesitation to speak out into the microphone, but once we started off, they did a great job. There were a few who were not comfortable speaking in English, so we encouraged them to speak in the language of their choice.

Then it was time for some singing.
Man! are these children talented of what!

By then, the rest of the volunteers were back from their shopping adventures. We all had lunch together.

Then the music teachers from the school gave their performance.

We had the Master of Mimicry, the Hindustani teacher and Carnatic teacher each give their performance...

We then had a quiz competition for the children. We were amazed by the knowledge of the children in not just their school syllabus but also current events. They knew their trivia well, be it Narain Karthikeyan or Sunita Williams.

By the time we finished, it was snack time....and even before we realised, it was time to leave.

Before leaving, we met Mr. Rakum, the founder of the school. It takes a lot of courage, patience, perseverence and a good heart to run such an institution. God bless the likes of Mr. Rakum.

The other CTW projects that I've been a part of:
Baale school
Acts of Faith
:)

Quiet weekend

This has been an awfully quiet weekend (don't ask my neighbours **)

Watched Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd. The movie starts off well - but somewhere in between it loses its grip. It is a good effort but could have been made better.
I love the songs "Sajnaji vari" and "Pyar ki yeh kahani". Minissha and Abhay have done a great job with the dancing :)

Been listening to the songs from Cheeni Kum. I wouldn't use the phrase 'old wine in new bottle' because what Illaiyaraja has done to the old classics is just amazing.
I just can't stop listening to "Jane do na" which earlier used to be "Jotheyali" in the Kannada movie Geetha.
The line "na.... na na zidd na karo" There... that single line Shreya has sung it so well, I've been listening to the song over and over again just for that :)

** Quiet weekend would not exactly be what my neighbours call it. I've spent a lot of time playing the keyboard, working on a tune (with the volume really loud)

The tune

There... that was my weekend!

Movie Classics

Remember the good old days when at Cartoon Network magically turned into the TNT movie channel. I used wait for 9PM to watch all the old English classics that they played.
And then one (not so fine) day, Cartoon Network became a 24 hour channel :(
Some 2 years back I was checking the net to get a list of 'must watch' English classics and its only now that I am getting to watch them...
I guess when it comes to watching Classics... its never too late :)

Movie #1 - Singing in the rain
I love watching musicals.... the songs, the dance, the expressions, the background scores!
I've watched this movie earlier but wanted to watch it again.
Gene Kelly is such a delight to watch with his moves, his song-dance sequences and comedy.
There's one scene where Donal O'Connor tells Gene that 'comedy' is what the audience want. For this he does a 5 minute dance-cum-comedy stint that'll have your sides aching from all the laughing.
Debbie Reynolds is such a pretty face with amazing singing & dancing talent.
On the whole I thoroughly enjoyed the movie :)

Movie #2 - Casablanca
I admit, it took me sometime to understand what was happening in the begining of the movie. But once I got there, I just loved the movie from then on....
This is a movie about patriotism, sacrifice, love, sticking to your beliefs no matter what and above all.... friendship. Amazing acting by Humphrey Bogart , Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid & Claude Rains.
This is one great movie and I'm going to watch again before I return the DVD :)