Iron Man lives again!

I had always been a fan of Iron Man, ever since I came to know about such a thing. Iron Man to me was never the superhero who puts on a Armour of gold-titanium alloy and saves the world by beating the bad guys. Iron Man to me has always been the guy who has some sort of premonition about the approaching perils to the world and time-travels to save the world; he however, gets stuck in a great magnetic field and remains immobile for sometime. During his duration of inaction, people react indifferently to him and he is despised with people forgetting his actual intentions. And so the iron man decides to take revenge on the ungrateful people, that is to put it exactly
“He kills the people he once saved”
I’ve been a fan of the “Iron Man” song by the often wrongly misunderstood band called “Black Sabbath”. So, naturally my curiosity was aroused when I heard about the movie called “Iron man”. I knew it was based on a comic character, but I also knew that the superhero sings this song (Retroactive continuity or retcon). So I was pretty eager how the video for this song will be or in what situation it comes.

And so I saw the movie.

At the very beginning itself, a clattery “Back in Black” screams at you rather unsuspectingly and then the movie moves on without any signs of the song appearing. The movie of course, was great and I was fully engrossed in it (are all superhero movies like this? I guess, I made a mistake in discounting them). But there was a part of me that was sulking for Iron Man song which didn’t materialize.
And then the movie got over, I was baffled why didn't they use this song?. Then as the credits started rolling, the well known tapping of drums comes which is interspersed by a small banging with a robotic voice calling out “Iron Man” twice, which is followed by the famed riff by the 3-fingered genius called Iommi and along with it comes Ozzy’s “deep in the well” howling voice singing
“Has he lost his mind?
Can he see or is he blind,
Can he walk at all?
Or if moves will he fall?

Is he alive or dead
has he thoughts within his head
We'll just pass him there
Why should we even care?”

I was a happy man again, though I still didn’t get to see a video for it.

The panic in the needle park

Saw “The panic in the needle park” today. It’s the movie which coppola supposedly showed to the producers to convince them that Al Pacino could play the Michael Corleone’s role. The panic in the needle park as the name suggests is about the dangers of drug abuse. Al pacino is a small time crook and an addict, living in the Sherman Street (the needle park), he meets Kitty Winn quite accidentally and they both fall in love. At first life’s good and they are happy, but slowly Winn also becomes an addict owing to Pacino’s indifference when he’s fully doped. And then “Panic” arrives --- a situation where drugs become scarce on the streets and their price escalates. Then their lives go spiraling down and their desperation takes them on a path of self-destruction.



A particular mention must be made of the shots where they show the injection of drugs into blood which are almost physically painful. There is no music in the movie and there’s constant street-car noise that accompanies the whole movie.The performances are excellent, pacino proving that he doesn’t need a coppola to make him act. It’s in fact the first movie that I have seen in which Pacino does not wield a gun. The movie pretty much reminds of “Requiem for a dream”, but this isn’t a tear-jerker and there is quite a charm attached to this 1970 movie that makes it a little more appealing to watch, though there should be no doubt that “requiem” is a far more disturbing movie. This still is a strong stuff(was banned in UK for 4 years).All in all, a must-see movie.



This isn't the lengthy injection scene exactly, it's one of the shorter injection scenes and pretty much has the same effect.

So it was a passing cloud after all!

I was in a dilemma yesterday whether to keep up with the ball-by-ball updates of WI chase against the aussies (which they did without much success) or to watch jaysuriya and sachin blast away a bunch of discards and amateurs (which also didn’t materialize).
Watching the 20-20 was more appealing as it was coming on TV while I could only follow the updates of the test match on cricinfo. The test match was interestingly poised with the host requiring 240 odd runs with 9 wickets in hand to give aussies an underdog bite, the West Indians promised more or so it appeared, which somehow lured me into following it. Though the host began boldly, they lost wickets in a heap and Clarke and Lee had the final say in spite of resistance from the tail. The match was anything but interesting after the first half hour and after chanderpaul got dismissed there was only one team that can win. Knowing this, I started seeing the IPL match where a half-hearted Mumbai Indians were blown away in the last over. In spite of being a thriller, there was hardly anything I could feel after the match while the memories of the 3rd and 4th days of the test match were still lingering in my mind (though it came a cropper on the 5th) . Maybe Jeffrey Archer (the prolific author) was after all correct when he said
"Twenty20 is not cricket. It's pure entertainment. VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid batting out a whole day against the Australians - now that is cricket."

P.S- Imagine VVS Laxman and Dravid batting a whole day, this might lead people lining up to go out rather than queuing up to come into the stadium.

An unsung hero

"What scared me was he said he couldn't feel his hands or feet.You don't want to see anyone get hurt. To his credit he got back up there, and batted beautifully after that."

Lee said after play about hitting chanderpaul with a vicious bouncer.

The diminutive batsman that he is, Shivnarine Chanderpaul is well known for his cricketing eccentricities and for his batting style and technique or rather for the lack of it. Eccentricities include wearing stickers just below his eyes, which he later explained as anti-glare stickers and his unusual routine of removing the bail to mark his guard at the batting crease. When he’s batting you can be pretty sure it’s only him, that is, he opens up his stance- his feet point mid-off and he looks as if he’s going to turn around to square leg, like as if he’s going to scoop over short fine leg or swing the bat like golf club.

"You're waiting for him to face up, and he already is," said Glenn McGrath.

Shane Warne once stated that he would like to bowl to him from square leg.

Sometimes he opens his stance too much, no wonder he doesn’t score much in V-region. This open, crablike stance has been criticized by many, yet he has been effective so much that he was hailed as the next best thing to happen to West Indies cricket.

Once asked he responded"I have heard all kinds of comments (about my technique). But my opinion is that if your technique is working for you, you should try and improve upon it." Chanderpaul may not be the most elegant batsman to grace the game - but he averages 46.63 after 104 Tests and 39.00 from 219 ODIs. Nobody acknowledges it because he doesn't look fancy on television, he's not outgoing, he's not flashy, but the purpose of a batsman is to get runs and he has been pretty consistent at it.Chanderpaul supposedly developed the strange stance as a way of protecting his face when his father rallied the entire village to hurl balls at him from point-blank range when he was young.

Shiv’s batting has also been termed dull, dour and full of unattractive edges and nudges, few know he scored the 4^th fastest century against the mighty Aussies. Very recently he also led West Indies to a seemingly impossible win by scoring 10 runs off last 2 deliveries. He’s also well known for batting for long periods of time, in fact holds the record for staying at the crease for more 1000 minutes without being dismissed. He has done it thrice and no one else has done it more than once. Being a middle-order bat, he has the unenviable task of batting with tail and most often he is stranded alone at the crease.

Some of his finest moments were against India against whom he scored 3 centuries in a series just after returning from an injury. It would be unfair not to mention the Eng-WI series where he scored 74, 50, 116 not out, 136 not out and 70, while the next highest score for WI in series was a distant 59. He single handedly took WI to an improbable victory in Edgbaston but unfortunately ran out of partners and as a result lost the match.

Shiv is shy, smiles parsimoniously, very religious. He’s a gutsy player along the lines of senior Waugh. So it was no wonder that shiv decided to continue batting after being felled by a Lee scorcher to reduce WI deficit. He was the last man to be dismissed and the crowd’s applause died only after it was announced that he was no longer at stadium, but has been taken to a hospital for treatment. (Personally it would have been great to be at the stadium) This inspires a young, unheralded bunch of bowlers who have the mighty Aussies reeling at 17/4. Of course, Aussies still have upper hand and the shiv inspired WI fight-back might after all be just a passing cloud. The man who made impossible possible (converting an insipid WI team into a dangerous outfit even if it is only for a short time) deserves atleast a gracious salute and for West Indies to emerge from their slump in the post-Lara era, he must go on doing it.

The crablike stance

I had a dream

This is my dream,
It is my only dream,
I dreamt it,
I dreamt that my hair was kempt,
Then i dreamt my true love unkempt it.

-Ogden Nash

I read this some days ago and had a similar dream few days later.Only similar because there was no true love,instead there was a perfect stranger and she tousled my hair so vigorously that my head looked a little like this




I knew Eraserhead was pretty disturbing, but never thought it would disturb in me in such a fashion. And the first thing i did next morning was get myself a good haircut.

Well,i always thought if i start blogging,my posts would be about music or cricket or maybe books.somehow i wanted to surprise myself and so this.