Alone at the Movies

I .

So the other day (It was a Friday) I got super bored at work and I looked up a list of movies which were showing in town and I was quite delighted to see that the new sci-fi thriller Looper starring Bruce " He was actually dead the whole time" Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt was showing at a theatre near me. So I shut down my 'puter and walked to Gopalan theatre and then bought myself  a huge bowl of caramel popcorn and a large coke and sat down to enjoy the movie. Alone! Watching A Movie Alone!

There was this couple next to me (who spent most of the first half cuddling) and the guy was intrigued enough or impolite enough or saddened enough by my plight  to ask me if I was actually watching the movie alone without anyone accompanying me! I answered in the affirmative and mumbled something about my friends ditching me because they hated me. 

Thing is I don't mind watching movies alone. Even at home I'd rather watch a movie alone or at the most with another person so that I can fully concentrate on watching the movie.Watching a movie with another person also puts some pressure on me of hoping that they'd enjoy the movie as much as I do or  laugh at the parts I find funny in Dumb and Dumber!  I want to watch my movie with minimum distraction!

People consider going to the theatre to watch a movie as a social thing but what usually happens is you actually sit in silence for about 2 hours and watch the movie so I don't see any particularly huge social benefit in watching movies with friends . 

If you go watch a movie alone you are also the master of your own destiny etc etc...you don't have to wait for friends who may or may not turn up on time; The other day a couple of my friends actually landed up at the wrong movie theatre while we waited for them at the one we were supposed to go to. Idiots! I'm looking at you Bena and Makima!  I hate missing the beginning of movies and I also love watching the title sequence shown at the start of the movies . The titles at the beginning of the Leonardo di Caprio movie "Catch Me If You Can" are one of the best I've seen in this regard. (Linky)

Or maybe I'm just a loner.

II .

I still love Dumb and Dumber but of late I've become rather snobbish in my movie watching habits and Hollywood blockbusters such as The Transformers series or GI Joe or The Avengers don't particularly get me excited and due to this I hardly watch movies in theatres since most of the English movies which hit the theatres in India are the blockbusters. 

I prefer my movies to be dialogue/plot driven and even though I am able to enjoy the occasional Michael Bay special effects product placement blockbuster I'd much rather sit down to  an engrossing  Hitchcock/ Fincher/ Scorcese/Coen Brothers/Lynch movie which makes me think about the movie long after it is over.

Looper is a time travel movie directed by Rian Johnson who also directed the excellent modern noir movie Brick and I would definitely recommend both movies to the discerning movie aficionado . Looper is a movie which  follows a story line  similar to the "if you could go back in time would you be able to kill yourself but then wouldn't that be impossible because your younger self would be dead and if you were dead how would you be able to go back in time to kill yourself?" conundrum.

Go watch.

3/III

'1979' and 'Thirty Three' are two of my favourite Smashing Pumpkins songs. I was born in 1979 and I turned 33 yesterday. Apt. Both songs are from their cleverly titled album "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness".

From the Sports Desk: The Trials and Tribulations of Hockey in India

Recently there was a story about the Mizoram Womens' Hockey team getting trounced 20-0  in a hockey tournament and everyone was up in arms about how it was a shameful thing and that we should be doing something to fix this problem. The same "lets do something about it" philosophy is also applied to the game of hockey on a national basis but nothing ever works out.  The Indian team does something decent like beating Pakistan and our star Indian players come crying and say "boo hoo hoo, dat cricketer gets paid millions of dollars and we get paid only in dal and chappati and we play wearing plastic slippers and hockey is supposed to be our national game, sob!" 

Fact of the matter is to get the government to do something about it there must also be a public response to what they are doing. Sports like hockey, cricket or football are stadium oriented games; multitudes of people need to appreciate and admire what you are doing!  

Now this is where hockey falls short of cricket - hockey is rather boring to the general public (I'm sorry but it is true).  It is boring to play and boring to watch ; I've watched a few live games of club level hockey and it was mildly interesting. I also got a chance to play hockey on a regular basis during my school days and I found to be a game lacking in artistic merit. I'm a self professed sports fan but unless its an Olympic or World Cup final or an India Pakistan hockey game there are not many games of hockey which will have me frothing at the mouth. There might be a few dribbles and well taken shots but nothing that will put it on par with Tendulkaresque cricketing shots or Thierry Henry-esque football goals. 

Here again is a perfect example of the failure of hockey to match up with other top top sports disciplines - Big Names!  I used to actually follow a decent amount of hockey in my school days and I remember some of the names of great Indian hockey players like Dhanraj Pillai, Pargat Singh and that other Sikh guy who could play hockey. Cricket and Football have produced household names who are superstars in their own right. However this is more of a vicious cycle kind of thing - the more popular the game the more popular will be the stars that play it. Hockey unfortunately will always remain a tier 2 sport because there is nothing swashbuckling or highly artistic about it that will bring in the fans.

A couple of years ago ESPN and the Indian Hockey Federation collaborated to start a new tournament called the Premier Hockey League in India where top hockey teams player a short league tournament against each other. It was a resounding flop despite the best efforts of the organizers. They did try their best - new rules, cheerleaders, live telecast on ESPN, basketball style time period of four quarters of play.. etc but sadly it didn't work out and the tournament was scrapped after one year.This year again the IHF and Nimbus Sports collaborated to start a new club based hockey tournament based on the IPL cricket league; I think it was a reasonable success but it remains to be seen if the next edition will see the light of day.

Fact of the matter is Hockey is a niche sport and this is the case not only in India but in other top hockey playing nations of the world such as Germany, Argentina, Holland etc. I'm pretty sure none of the members of the general public in these countries would be able to name any of their top hockey players.

Is there a solution? Ice Hockey is insanely popular in the US/Canada. Why is it popular? I think it has the image of being a testosterone fueled game which is also fast paced and littered with occasional fighting. Can these be applied to field hockey? Unlikely.

Bottomline is yes the government, the players, the organizers and the corporates are trying what seems to be their best to make hockey more popular but unless something drastically changes hockey will always play second fiddle to cricket or even third fiddle to football in India.

 

Addendum: Was saddened to read about the passing away of Mr.G Kasturi who was the editor of The Hindu newspaper. He is relevant to this topic because he also owned the Sportstar magazine which was and still is the sports bible for sports aficionados in  India. It was on the pages of The Sportstar magazine that I used to read about the exploits of our Indian hockey team in foreign countries.