For the love of fictional characters

Why is the first step so difficult? The first massive, colossal, leap you have to make, to get over the inertia and just start writing. Or is it inertia? Maybe it’s fear. Sometimes when I read a good book, I feel inspired to write but I’m afraid that I can’t ever write that well. I want sentences to just flow beautifully from my fingertips and onto the keyboard, but I always feel that I won’t be good enough.

Why can’t I just use mellifluous words that are just sitting right there in my head? Why can’t I weave beautiful stories without ever doubting my work? Ernest Hemingway once said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” So, there. 

I wanted to write about some of the movies I’ve watched recently. The latest one amongst them is Ruby Sparks. It’s a story about a boy who writes down a character and falls in love with it and she comes to life. A quirky, complicated girl with whom he shares a wonderful relationship. But when things start to go wrong between them, he tries to tweak her by writing more about her. Fascinating, right? I mean, what would it be like to whip up someone like that? Someone you think would be perfect for you? For instance, I know exactly the kind of guy one of my friends would like to be in a relationship with. Tall, lanky, bespectacled, crooked teeth, perfect nose, singer, drummer, football player, socially awkward, sarcastic, smart. How would it work in real life though, I wonder.

One of the best movies that I’ve seen in a long time though, is Her. What an irresistibly beautiful movie. It makes so much sense in the technologically advanced world we are living in. Imagine having that one socially aware operating system who is also our best friend, who we can call and have an intelligent discussion with, who we can ask anything about anything in the world. It only gets messy when emotions get in the way. God, emotions can be so detrimental to everyone, to society. Why are we such a backward species? We kill each other, we are greedy and malicious and do unspeakable things to our own kin. And what is up with all the diseases and sickness and the slow, painful deaths?  Why is the whole process of reproduction so outrageously risky and disgusting? We should have been more evolved, resistant, logical and advanced organisms. I should have been born a billion years later. Anyway, I digress. The point being, the movie is fantastic.

Another movie to watch out for is The Ship of Theseus (Fair warning: This movie is not, I repeat, NOT about a ship) It’s one of the most brilliant masterpieces any Indian movie maker has created. And that too, a movie maker who once wrote dialogues for Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi and Kahaani Ghar Ghar Ki. Until one day, he realized how pathetic his job really was and devoted himself to making god amazing movies. Anand Gandhi used Theseus’s paradox as the base of the film which questions whether an object which has had all of its components removed and replaced remains the same object. There are four stories, each beautifully constructed and woven together to form a brilliant tapestry in the end. It’s deep, you need patience and the eye for little things to fully enjoy this movie. Some of the discussions in it made me pause it and think over it. It is really something. I am so glad India is going through this sort of movie renaissance where there is this whole new parallel cinema running alongside the mainstream crap, which is coming out which such good movies. There is Vikramaditya Motwane, Anurag Kashyap, Anand Gandhi, Ritesh Batra, Kiran Rao and so many others, trying to prove what movie watching is all about. Just go through this list once. Exciting, isn't it?

Next, I watched Frozen. Sure, it’s a beautiful, funny, very well-made Disney movie. But I don’t get the hype about the two main characters being female and how it is a feminist movie. I mean, Anne was stupid and clumsy. She fell in love with a guy who she met for a few hours, decided to marry him, offended her sister and then ran away onto snow-covered mountains to get her atop a horse? Then she had to ask another guy for help. Elsa on the other hand, somehow really irritated the way she handled her problems. Okay, if you are not convinced, please read this article. I do give this movie a big thumbs up for being funny, beautiful, entertaining and engaging. Just let’s not discuss the feminism aspects of it.

Okay, I really need not say anything about the next movie. You’ve seen it, you’ve loved it and you’re rooting for Leonardo Di’Caprio to win the Oscar with all your heart. The Wolf of Wall Street. I loved DiCaprio hated him at the same time in the movie. I loved his drool phase and his cerebral palsy phase. Sheer, sheer magnanimity.

Last on my list is Don Jon, a movie about a guy addicted to porn. I had a few problems with this movie as well. The entire purpose of this movie, actor and director Joseph Gordon Levitt claims to make is to show how porn makes us have unrealistic expectations with  with our sex lives. But the movie somehow seemed to do the opposite. It reinforces the fact that girls are not hot enough, guys have to do all the work, and sex is never as good as the porn. He sort of used sex to sell the movies. Opinions are solely my own, however.

Ooh, I’m also watching Grey’s Anatomy, which is a good show. But if you’ve been a loyal Scrubs fan, you will not like it much. The concept is the same, the characters are somewhat similar, in the end everything resolves, and the narrator has an epiphany, which all of us can relate to. Scrubs is funnier, but I guess Grey's Anatomy is more popular. Oh, and the doctors look like supermodels who somehow always have perfectly blow-dried hair and lip gloss on. But it’s a good show to watch when you are not getting any sleep at night. 

Well, that’s that. I have more movies to watch on my hard disk and I cannot wait to start gorging on them. But I have this big submission on Tuesday and I JUST CAN’T SEEM TO GET DOWN AT IT. Tomorrow, fo shizzle. It's deliciously chilly up on these hills and the weather can't get any better. A few things are stagnant but I hope they will pick up soon. I shall be back.

See you soon!