Late nights and movies

Asphyxiating smell of Cigarette smoke combined with the fragrance of incense sticks filled the fourth floor of hotel corridor. Standing shirtless in the balcony, I could see a deviant scene below. The clock had struck and it was midnight but still the street below didn’t show any sign of inactivity.

Here, it was, bursting with energy as every restaurant seemed to pack in the last moolah for the day. It was the night before comedk and the street seemed to be an influx of the cultural diversity of India.

My eyes, heavy due to the long flight and all the rice I had since morning, though intoxicated, refused to sleep though. The shadow of a big banyan trees in contrast with the yellow light of street lamp casted a silhouette on the wall, which was intimidating to say the least.

Bored of looking around I switched on the TV.

 Streaming through an ocean of kannada channels I could breathe a  short sigh of relief as I found an island in the “discovery” channel, it was later I realized it too was dubbed and being telecasted in kannada.

After a few minutes of exploration and investigation, catching hold of SET-PIX was at par with being strangled on a deserted island surrounded by sharks which be au fait with our language.

The movie being shown was ong bak 2. I was hooked as I found the steel grayish cold ambience of the movie quite enchanting. The plot wasn’t too good but I stuck on to it in dearth of nothing better to see. After wading through the movie for an hour and half, I was hardly able to comprehend anything. The movie left a meaningless void, which perhaps was the precursor to entrap the audience for ong bak 3, which I haven’t gathered the courage to watch yet.

I was reminded of the incident today, as after almost a couple of months, rocky 2 was something that I bumped into. One hand pushups were the one of the reasons I watched the movie for, an oscar winning screenplay being the other. The murmuring dialogue delivery of Mr. Stallone coupled with ‘you know’ in almost every other line was infuriating, if not frustrating. As I watched the boxing sequences where the protagonists taunt each other, I was vaguely reminded of sunny deol’s antics from apne (word check wants me to change it into acne; is it right??). The best part about the movie was the way it started

“Metro Goldwin Mayer presents”.

It’s something rarely seen in the movie these days. But who’s complaining??

p.s.; the lion of goldwin mayer had more expressions in the 15 second clip than sly stallone bestowed upon us in the 2 and a half hour of junk. Avoid if you must.