It's been a while

Yes, it's indeed been a while. I've been quite busy over the last couple of days - working for a change (As Karthik would say). Anyhow, updates wise - both of us plan to go river rafting this weekend (on sunday) along with Mayur & Purvi. It's in a place called Lotus, in California. Will definitely dedicate a post to it, once we are back.
Another update is that parents will be coming over to the US, sometime in September - Yippee !!!!
The third update is that last week we saw a couple of movies - Shooter (Excellent), Surf's up (really nice animated one), Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (quite nice), Swami (ok, ok), Hot Fuzz (terrible), Shootout at Lokhandwala (quite gory - but well made). Whew, thats a whole lot.
Nothing else to add on, so will add on later. Take care, people.

300 - The Movie

Just a quick one here, as it's close to 0030 hrs. We just got back from watching the "300" movie. Simply amazing.

I really liked the picturization, the theme, the color scheme - everything.

The movie is remarkably faithful to Frank Miller’s original graphic novel, which is a very stylized retelling of the true story of the 300 Spartan warriors led by their kind Leonidas, who made a suicidal last stand against an invading Persian army led by Xerxes at the Hot Gates of Thermopylae. The narrow pass allowed the 300 efficient fighters to hold off far superior numbers for days before finally being overwhelmed and slaughtered.

The director - Snyder is a visual genius. He's created several gorgeous moments, while at the same time not detracting from the action. It’s quite impressive – 300 identical looking Spartans fighting against hordes of identical looking foes would, in the hands of most modern directors, be a nightmare of confusion, but Snyder doesn’t go for the quick choppy editing technique. He allows the action moments to play out in very, very long shots, relying on speed ramping – everybody’s fast! Now it’s super slomo! – to create the dynamics of a fast edit. The long shots are especially fantastic because you are watching the actors going through multiple moves and multiple opponents.

Xerxes - the Persian king and so called self proclaimed God, is presented as a huge, effeminate figure. In a moment directly from the graphic novel, Xerxes is at his most threatening not when facing Leonidas but when he comes up behind him and places his massive hands on his shoulders.

All in all, a must see.

New Year Celebrations

We had a really small but good get-together on the night of the 31^st at our place. Murthy Uncle, Meena Aunty, Mom, Dad, Rayo, Mahi & I were the constituents of this group.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here. Had swung by Rayo's place in the evening, and since everyone else there was going over to Zenobia aunty's place for the celebrations, we (Mahi, Rayo & I) decided to head home.

We diverted via the New Food World which has opened up opposite Poulomi Hospitals, next to Sainikpuri. Picked up the Pillsbury rich chocolate instant cake mix - not for the microwave but for the cooker, as we decided to make the cake the hard way. Incidentally, the cake was an egg less one.

Headed home, initiated the baking process and sat down to watch Star Wars part III - Revenge of the Sith, as this whole month, Star Movies is telecasting the Star wars Saga every weekend.

While we were watching the movie, Meena Aunty & Murthy Uncle came over, and we all had dinner together. The dessert of course was the cake.

We all got down to a few rounds of Uno, as well as Scrabble also known as Spell-O-Fun. We finally finished the scrabble game at about 11:50 pm, followed by a small photo shoot. Murthy Uncle won, followed by Mom, Meena Aunty and Rayo.

We also called up Chinni and Raja at the stroke of 12 and spoke to them.

All in all, a quiet new year bash.