freebird

Anthnoy Minghella is no more. I saw his The English Patient, The Talented Mr.Ripley and an earlier film, his debut, called Truly, Madly, Deeply. He also made Cold Mountain which I have not seen. Only liked the later films. English Patient was grand, in scale and passions. The romance was scalding and the grand vision of the director is evident in every scene, shot and dialogue and yet after a while it over-whelmed, for the wrong reasons.

 Not so with Truly, Madly, Deepy. A small film that has its heart in its place. Alan Rickman, more famous as a villain plays a ghost who comes to inhabit the world after his death; and departs once he is sure that his beloved has found new love and moved on. A small gem on love, loss, longing and moving on.

 The Talented Mr. Ripley was his best (I have not seen Breaking and Entering). Jude Law, Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow at their best. The age, the music, the easy charm of Law, the cold and ruthless Matt Damon, the sins, pleasures, guilt and helplessness of the characters will be an eternal pleasure.

 Mr. Minghella RIP

 Raghuvran

 Another from the film industry. This time it is in India. Raghuvaran first to prominence with Shiva – a violent take on the nexus between cops, criminals and politics set against a college environment. Raghuvaran was Bhavani – a brooding villain, dressed casually in jeans and an olive green shirt, carrying a hip-flask, watching cricket matches. His baritone made everybody swoon.

 He was , in fact, also noticed in Mani Ratnam’s ‘Anjali’ as a patient father to a kid who is battling cancer. He also got typecast, playing villains with the same mannerisms, but if Shiva worked – it was also because of Raghuvaran as Bhavani.

 Jai Bhavani

 Arthur C Clarke

 The sci-fi author who settled in Sri Lanka finally touched base with the high heavens he always wrote about. A visionary author who predicted commercial space travel and the use of satellites in communication, died wishing for a peaceful Sri Lanka, his adopted country.

 He is, of course, known to most of us for 2001: A Space Odyssey, the film that Stanley Kubrick made on the novel that Clarke wrote. In fact, it is based on Clarke’s short story called ‘The Sentinel’. The novel was published after the film, as both their developments progressed simultaneously.

 Clarke had 3 Laws, which are

    1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

    2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

    3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

 All RIP