Swades
Ever since I arrived in Bombay a week ago I've been feeling great about being home. Swades was definitely the right movie to watch. My Chitra Pachi (aunt) was invited by Ashutosh Gowariker for a preview of Swades today. They go back a long way from the time he acted in her TV series Kacchi Dhoop in 1985-86. Chitra Pachi ofcourse asked him if she could bring her family along and we all (my parents, Ritwik and I) tagged along. Ashutosh remembered Ritwik and me as kids hanging around the set during shooting. (Incidentally, we also had some small forgettable roles in the serial). He was quite amazed at how big we had grown :)
The film was awesome. The cast performed really well. Shah Rukh Khan was surprisingly good- I walked into the theater expecting nothing from him , especially after seeing Veer Zaara recently, but he gave a powerful performance. He didn't ham as usual - and emoted effectively using his facial expressions and eyes in a subtle manner. The lead actress is a new comer and was pretty good too.
Ashtosh deserves full credit for the concept and the script. He has managed to make a regular hindi commercial film , omitting cliches in the storyline like villians and tragedy and breaking the stereotypes in the depiction of certain characters like villagers, lower caste people and even foreigners (in this case Americans- who speak in English instead of Hindi with silly accents !). The concept is quite different from the run of the mill stories, the script is crisply written and is witty . The songs blend into the storyline and there are no "item numbers".
The cinematography and locations selected were beautiful.
There are some shots taken from SRK's apartment which show the memorials in Washington DC. Looking at those shots I knew they could be taken only from Rosslyn (where I live- the fact that some shots were taken literally from my backyard did make me happy). The big glass windows made me suspect that the building was Beldevere which is very close to my building and Ashutosh verified this.
I could go on and on - but since the movie hasn't been released yet , I won't ruin it (more!) for everyone else.
Let me just say - its the best Hindi film I have seen in ages .. considering the BS thats churned out these days - so go watch it.
Torture? No way!
After the Abu Ghraib scandal broke out, Pentagon officials claimed there were "isolated" incidents and proceeded to court martial Lindy England and the other soldiers in the pictures. This was the right course to follow, except that none of the higher ups were held accountable for the incidents. Rumsfeld ofcourse denied any knowledge of these incidents and has been in denial ever since.
A couple of days back, Red Cross released a report which said that methods being used on detainees at Guantanamo Bay were "tantamount to torture".It was the first time that the Red Cross, which has been conducting visits to Guantánamo since January 2002,had made such a strong assertion. The reportwent on to say that methods used for interrogation included "humiliating acts, solitary confinement, temperature extremes, use of forced positions." This has been one of the strongest criticism on detainee treatment at Guantanamo Bay and comes in the wake of revelations made by British former detainees after their release and a court ruling that the tribunals used for trying detainees were unconstitutional.
The Pentagon's response was as expected- they brushed off the Red Cross' complaints on Guantanamo , just as they had done with Abu Ghraib in the past. Rumsfeld, still in denial, refused to accept the charges and his spokesperson said, the Red Cross had "their point of view," which was not shared by the Bush administration. Fair enough- but, the Red Cross' point of view is reflected in the Geneva Conventions and in American law.
Accountability and responsibility have definitely not been the strong suits of this administration. If this were true Rumsfeld would definitely not be in office after the mess in Iraq and the Abu Ghraib scandal. The general who set up the system at Guantánamo has now been promoted to take charge of prisons in Iraq. If you thought Ashcroft was bad, think again - Alberto Gonzales, the new Attorney General nominee is one of the architects of the administration's prisoner policy. Gonzales has gone on record saying that the the standards of the Geneva convention are "outdated". Given these facts, we can expect the White House, the Pentagon and the Justice Department to continue to remain in denial and not address the abuse.
Its very distressing that an administration which was elected because of "moral values" and "ethics" continues to support totally immoral and unethical practices, literally in its own backyard. Its even more distressing to note that, while these issues get international media coverage, they are covered only by the "liberal" media in the US, systematically ignored by the right wing media stations that cover the red states.
