Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi

"Hazaaron khwaishein aisiki har khwaish pe dum nikleBahut nikle mere armaanlekin phir bhi kam nikle"
- Mirza Ghalib
Ghalib’s poetry has the quintessential quality of striking exactly that right chord in your heart. I cannot imagine anyone not being moved one way or the other by his shers and ghazals. This post, however, is not about poetry [...]

Weekend movie: Marathon Man (1976)

Note: any link between name of this film and my previous post is coincidental.
While the majority of people were out wasting $8-10 on the Da Vinci Code - we spent Saturday evening at home, making our $20 odd investment per month on Netflix worth it.
Marathon Man reputedly depicts the most chilling torture sequence in Hollwyood [...]

The new Jetta ads

Volkswagen has been airing some new TV advertisements touting the safety of their latest Jetta model. These ads, two which can be seen here and here, are pretty high on the shock value. They show the passengers getting involved in a real-time accident, which would be quite fatal if not for the safety features of [...]

Three cheers for……

……the Rock Bottom Brewery in Bethesda, MD. They have a friendly staff, a great selection of award-winning brews and some of the best bar food I have had. Post-conference hanging out at this bar was much fun. (They make a decent martini as well, although I suspect they went really light on the Sapphire)
Note that [...]

Inside Man

Finally, after a long wait (ever since Lord of the Rings probably), a film that is worth the 8 bucks admission to the theatre! Short review: don’t miss. Long review follows (with apologies for the two-week delay).
Director Spike Lee’s usual forte is ’serious’ films that often deal with race issues such as Malcolm X, [...]

Still life with commentator and ‘Black’ humour

We attended two programs over the weekend - both involved some commentary on the current state of politics (in the US), although the approaches were quite different. Friday evening, we went to a program entitled ‘Still life with Commentators’, involving a multimedia presentation by the trio of Vijay Iyer, Mike Ludd and Ibrahim Quarishi. Saturday [...]

Netflix throttling and three from queue

At the beginning of the year, our Netflix DVD turnover rate was so prolific (we were watching ~3-4 films per week), they started throttling us (oh yes that is an official policy!). That rate, however, has dropped off significantly over the last month or so, allowing the company to be profitable again!
Anyway, here are [...]