Ultramarathon Man

What if I told you that you had to run 50 marathons in 50 days? A marathon is about 42kms or 26 miles. Well that’s not all, after you have run these 50 marathons you have to run more? 3000 miles actually, back to your home...your reaction???

Now, would you believe me if I told you that there is a man on this planet who is already doing exactly all that I mentioned just now? He has finished his 50 marathons in 50 consecutive days, the New York marathon on November 5^th was his 50th consecutive marathon, and now he currently running back from New York to his home in San Francisco. Oh and he has already covered about 540 miles in 12 days.

Name: Dean Karnazes - http://www.ultramarathonman.com/flash/
His daily blog including the 50 marathons in 50 days: ENDURANCE IS
Where is he today running from NY to SF? Here...
His book: Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner

Quotes:
"There is magic in misery."

"To me life is a struggle. If I'm not pushing myself, then I'm not happy," he says. "People think if we had every damn comfort available to us - if we removed all the struggle - we'd be happy. I think there's a lot of miserable people out there, and one of the reasons is, there's no struggle. They're taken care of every day. But I think there's a lot of happiness in suffering."

Mooru Plays

Saw these 3 plays at the Rangashankara theater…I must say that this theater is just wonderful and I am ever so thankful that it exists.

Art
This play was performed by a Chennai based troupe called Evam.

This one has a very interesting story line…It’s a story about three close buddies who start to fall apart after one of them spends a fortune buying a painting of white lines drawn on white background. There is a bit of technical talk about art but that part I didn’t catch much. But primarily the play explores the interrelationships of the 3 characters as they start measuring their friendship and existence with respect to each other. All this starts with one of them buying the painting, the second guy calling it “shit!” and the third friend somewhat innocent and diplomatic getting horribly caught in between. The piece of art divides the three friends at various angles through out the play as they align and realign amongst themselves. Tempers flare with intensity and they say the bitterest of things to each other but slowly confessions pour out and the dust finally settles.

Overall it was a good performance by all the three characters. I found the characters quite identifiable and the play to be really close to real life situations. There is some extra energy that flows through when you can associate with the situations being portrayed. These were friends just fighting, deliberately saying hurtful and bitter things, falling apart and finally trying to find their friendship again.

Woza Albert!
This play was performed by a troupe called Rafiki. The story is based in South Africa and deals with Apartheid (Woza means rise and Albert is the name of an assassinated leader of South Africa).

Despite the subject it deals with, the play is a comedy (a dark comedy maybe) and it starts with the rumor spreading that God (Jesus/Morena) is coming to South Africa. The rest of the play carries us through vignettes of various emotions that people from all walks of life in South Africa go through. There are two actors in this play and they play numerous characters one after the other showing a range of emotions starting with euphoria and disbelief. Seeing that this news is empowering the black population, the white government starts to clamp down. There are scenes of God meeting common folk and the expectations of these folks ranging from absurd to reality. The ending is again amusing but the message of the play is still serious and dark.

The acting was really energetic and in strange kind of way extremely intense. One of the actors had an extremely expressive face which he thoroughly exploited. He was funny as hell and kept me thoroughly engrossed. There were a couple of scenes depicting the two characters traveling in a train and even flying a helicopter! They did all the sound affects themselves and were really good at it. But the highlight of the play for me was the first 5 minutes where the lights slowly increase and the actors sing an absolutely beautiful folksy kind of song with one of them drumming on a wooden box as the only accompaniment.

Bikhre Bimb
This is a play written by Girish Karnad and Arundhati Nag is the lead actress. Need I say more?!?

The play is a solo act and I saw the Hindi version. The story starts with an author who has written only in Kannada until now suddenly writing an English “upanyas” and becoming a worldwide success. She gives a TV interview where she tells the public story of how she wrote her story, her reaction to the success and answers her critics. The story she has written is about a paraplegic girl and she says the story was inspired by the life of her younger sister who died recently and was also paralyzed since birth. With the interview done, as she is about to leave the studio an image of her appears on the TV and calls her back. What follows is the discussion delving into her family, consisting of her husband and her sister, and the various levels of her own consciousness. The lady and inquisitive TV image carry on conversing revealing a thorny story and a relationship of a dark nature consisting of love, hate and jealousy.

The acting was just superb, as you can imagine talking to a taped person the timing, delivery and placement of the actress had to be spot on for the whole duration.

Perumazhakkalam (When it rains hard)

This is the Malayalam movie from where Nagesh Kuknoor borrowed the story for Dor. He did officially buy the story from the writer and gives the writer due credit in the credits section of Dor. The Indo-German film festival screened this movie and all that this movie shares with Dor is the overall plot. The filming and handling of the two movies are totally different and both are originals in their own rights.

The story here is the same, in a fight between two Indian roommates in the Saudi, one guy “accidentally” kills the other. And the wife of murderer takes a journey to seek a signature from the wife of the murdered guy to pardon her husband. This movie is much more grounded and closer to real life. If such a thing actually happened then the story in real life will closely resemble this movie rather than Dor.

In this movie the wife doesn’t take a daring independent journey not knowing where to find the other lady. She knows exactly where the other lady lives and she sets out with her father accompanying her. Upon reaching the village, right from the first meeting she sees the other lady and begs her to sign the papers but the family members intrude and throw her and her father out. This repeats every time she makes an effort to convince her to sign. The wife of the murdered man is aptly shown, right from the beginning, lost in what to do. Finally on the last day despite knowing the consequences from her family will be dire she takes a priest’s help and makes the reverse journey to go and sign the papers. Then she returns to her house to face the brunt of the family...

The big downside of this movie is the songs. They are totally misplaced and useless. Also in the first half an hour the director seems confused as to what kind of a movie he is making, a commercial movie or an off-beat movie. The director isn't able to bring out the significance of the title in a very powerful way. For the first half the cinematography actually is very confused (other than the opening scene) but things settle down and the rest of the movie is well directed and shot. Overall if you, as I have, manage to blank out the songs then it is a really good movie, in fact better than Dor at certain places.

Mehr Filme

The Indo-German film festival is going on here in Bangalore…

Oktoberfest
This movie shows the amalgam of life on the last day of Oktoberfest, the two week beer festival held yearly in Munich. There are several stories running in parallel that are loosely linked here and there. The stories are about best friends, about relationships falling apart, coming together and about parents and children with the central theme sort of being love. None of the stories in the movie are intense as such and it just shows day to day people. The director himself said that if you really stand in Oktoberfest and take notice you will see all the things in his movie. What I really liked in this movie is that none of the stories as such reach a conclusion. There are left as loose knots that you can make up your mind as to where they will go next.

To me the story of the wheelchair guy pretending to be handicapped was really good. Twenty odd years ago there was a bomb blast at Oktoberfest and this guy keeps harassing the fest police over the phone by asking them questions like “Could it have been prevented?” In the middle he meets a girl who runs one of the rides at the fest. They obviously like each other and spend some time getting to know each other but in the end the cops catch up to the guy and arrest him. She is totally betrayed when she finds that he is actually not handicapped. At the police station he finally explains to the chief, who was patrolling the day of the bomb blast, that his father lost his legs in that blast. He was kid then and had made a big fuss about an Oktoberfest t-shirt. His dad had gone back to the fest area to get it for him and had got caught in the blast. Finally the next day he comes back to meet the girl but the scene fades there, you are left to think about what she says to him and where they go from there…

Overall the music is really very nice and had me tapping my feet time and time again. The movie is well shot given that it is almost completely oudoor and was made in the actual Oktoberfest.

Off-Beat
This is a story about kind of a reclusive guy who as a kid survived a serious car accident in which his parents were killed. After the crash, apart from the trauma, he has some medical complications for some years but now he has grown up and works as a paramedic where his nickname is “Crash”. He continues to have flashes and nightmares about his past life including the accident and it is through these flashes his story is told. His grandmother raises him and there is a beautiful scene in which she tells him about strength and courage. She says you can forget about everything else but there are only two things you can do in tough situations “inhale and exhale”.

Crash is kind of a loner but a workaholic who keeps helping all kinds of low lives on the streets. The tag line of the movie is “probes the soul of a troubled young man who rescues others but is desperately in need of rescue himself.” In his dreams he sees a woman who he actually doesn’t know. Finally one day he does meet her, the situation is complicated (I won’t explain much why it is complicated, but believe me it is nothing like a typical love triangle complicated) and they do fall in love but at the end of the movie life repeats itself in a horrible way. The scene where Crash is pulled between life and death has been shown is one of the most unique ways. So many movies show people dying but finally making it back to life due to a touch or a tear drop, this movie does the same but adds a very nice twist to it. To me the whole movie is worth watching just for that scene.

The movie also touches one of my favorite animal stories. A very touching story about a really brave and faithful mongoose, written by Rudyard Kipling: “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi”. In the ambulance when the girl tells Crash “I feel sorry for you” dealing with death, blood etc “and you always arrive late”. Crash replies with “My grandmother told me this and I believe in what Rikki-Tikki-Tavi said ‘There is reward in every good deed’.” And with that they burst out laughing.

Overall the story is pretty good and the movie is well made but it is very graphic since he is a paramedic, people with a weak stomach will have trouble.

Dry Spell

I don’t know about you but in terms of blogging the past 2-3 weeks have been dry spell. Strange and funny thing is that a bunch of blogs that I read, mostly all of them by my friends, also have suddenly hit the same dry spell. Other than Mr A posting some video links :-) from YouTube and Google videos there were basically no postings. Anyway…

The Departed
Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Martin Sheen, Mark Wahlberg, Alec Baldwin

Awesome movie, a gripping mob flick with plenty of violence, bloodshed and twists and turns that has lots of people going “Scorsese is back!” Although probably not as good as Scorsese’s own “Goodfellas” but it comes really very close. Personally I thought it was a little long but apart from that the story and the acting are pretty good. Jack Nicholson as the mob boss is flawless. Almost everyone in the acting department is...

The story is about the mob and the cops infiltrating each other, sending their people under cover. Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) the boss of an Irish mob systematically puts his youngest and brightest man (Matt Damon) to infiltrate the police and rise in their ranks. At the same time two good cops (Martin Sheen and Mark Wahlberg) send their brightest cadet (Leonardo DiCaprio) to infiltrate the Irish mob. Both the undercover men do well as a cop and a gangster and quickly rise to the top, all the while passing critical information back to their people. Slowly both sides become painfully aware of the rats and then to make it worse become aware that there isn't just one rat in their group, that is when the movie picks up pace. Watching the rat become a thorn in the side of Jack Nicholson is really riveting. The cops and the mob spin circles around each other through their informants and find themselves frustrated time and time again. On the side both young men thrown in the fray find themselves struggling to tell apart the lies from the truth and at the same time having internal struggles with trust and loyalty.

Memorable quotes:
Dignam (Mark Wahlberg): Who am I? I'm the guy that does his ^$%#in' job! You must be the other guy!

by Frank Costello:
“One of us had to die. With me, it tends to be the other guy.”
“When I was growing up, they would say you could become cops or criminals. But what I'm saying is this...when you're facing a loaded gun, what's the difference?”
“I don't wanna be a product of my environment, I want my environment to be a product of me.”
This last one is very similar to the quote by George Bernard Shaw that goes “all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” So looks like whether you are a mob boss or a software engineer or anything else, to get ahead in life the same principle applies ;-)