End of the year stuff

Oh hey it's the end of yet another calender year. Time to do some retrospective type stuff. This was a big, nay, a giant year for me. Graduated from college, moved to a new state, started first year of medical school - pretty happening year. Events prior to my graduation in June appear way more distant than they actually are. Even though it has been only (!) six months since I graduated, it seems like an eternity ago. Everything before that is now shrouded in a sepia-tinted haze.

Enough reminiscing, however. Every newspaper, magazine and TV show does a Top 10 list right around this time. I am nowhere as significant as these luminaries of our mainstream media, so I will do a Top 4 list instead. I have given slightly more weight to books because reading is my preferred form of entertainment. Right then, here we go:

Top books that I read in 2011
(These are books I read, not ones that were published this year)

4. More Money Than God by Sebastian Mallaby: about the secretive hedge-fund industry, whose titans rake in eye-popping billions most years on intricate trades. For instance, one guy bought all the Palladium in Russia as part of a trade.

3. Chaos by James Gleick: "butterfly effect", fractals, Mandelbrot sets, colorful personalities and whimsical brainiacs make up this engrossing read about a fascinating field that can only be described as a hybrid of math and physics.

2. Patel: A Life by Rajmohan Gandhi: a superb biography about Sardar Patel, one of India's foremost political leaders who was instrumental in the country's fight for independence. He was a close associate of Mahatma Gandhi and played a crucial role in the early days of the nascent Democracy.

1. Rocket Boys by Homer Hickam: rockets, adversity, feel-good story. Hickam has a knack for making readers feel closer to characters. Boy growing up in the heart of coal country in the 50's dreams of working for NASA. Moving descriptions of a decaying town and a decaying industry and the perennial tussle between unions and bosses.

Top 4 movies I saw in 2011:

4. Crazy, Stupid, Love: good, goofy, light.

3. Muppets: surprisingly fresh, self-aware and incredibly clever.

2.  Captain America: makes a worn out genre look compelling. self-deprecation, wit, sap all in the right amounts.

1. Moneyball: I don't even care about baseball, but this movie made baseball seem infinitely exciting. Quite an achievement. Brad Pitt gets a special mention for his acting.

Top 4 TV shows I followed in 2011:

4. Parks and Recreation: not as funny as the third season, but still miles ahead of its competitors

3. Justified: a trigger-happy US Marshal reluctantly returns to his native Kentucky to a whole host of professional and personal problems. Tremendous acting by the whole cast. Shout out to Timothy Olyphant for playing lead Raylan Givens.

2. The League: a bunch of douchebags obsessed with fantasy football and their antics each week. Extremely funny and original.

1. The Wire: Finally got around to finishing this epic that depicts life in a troubled Baltimore, and aspires to capture a snapshot of America in the process.  A lot of internet space has been devoted by people far more accomplished about the virtues of this masterpiece. One of the best (if not the best) things ever made on TV. Everything about this show is perfect.


By the way, this was the 100th post for the year 2011. 

Review - Sherlock Holmes: A game of shadows

I went to watch Sherlock Holmes 2 with some degree of enthusiasm. The inevitable "sequel letdown" phenomenon notwithstanding (Godfather 2 and the Star Wars sequels are some rare exceptions to this phenomenon), I was expecting a good performance by RDJ, whose portrayal of Holmes in the first film I thoroughly enjoyed.

However, I was disappointed by the movie, not because it is bad (in fact, it is an entertaining flick on the whole) but because it bills itself as something it is not. It purports to be a Sherlock Holmes movie, but apart from character names and very loose plot points, it does not resemble or faithfully represent any element of the original stories. The Holmes I grew up to enjoy and worship is a Holmes who solves cases by thinking. He listens to his clients and shuts himself up in his room, emerging only to use Watson as a sounding board. He does not like to leave his apartment and detests most forms of human contact, and engages in both of these activities only when absolutely necessary. Although an accomplished fighter, he never fights and I vaguely recall only two (maybe three) stories where he chases someone. To be fair, the first movie did away with a lot of these character traits mostly because of pragmatic and commercial concerns (a movie showing RDJ brooding on a divan playing shitty violin wouldn't be as fun, nor would it rake in half a billion dollars), and I understand that. When you make a movie, your primary goal is to broaden the audience for the story you are basing the movie on and make money.

Thoughts on the conclusion of the Harry Potter phenomenon

The last Harry Potter movie hit theaters with the impact of an artillery shell last week. Millions of rabid fans dressed up as their favorite characters and lined up hours before showtime to celebrate the end of the thrilling saga of "the boy who lived".

I was airborne when the movie arrived, squiggling around in a miserable economy class seat, itching to get off at Los Angeles. I obviously didn't get to see it on opening day, and since most of my friends had already seen it, couldn't find anybody to come with me until today. I saw Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 in a 70% empty theater in Anaheim Hills. And I thought it was the best out of all eight.

Now plenty of reviewers and internet pundits have done some extensive analysis on the movie and expounded upon its many themes, prominently highlighting the end of childhood aspect of it. I won't do much of that anymore because, frankly, it's boring at this point. I just wanted to offer some of my personal thoughts on it.

I am huge huge HP fan since I was 11. That's when my parents bought me the four-book set (the fifth one hadn't come out yet). I think I finished them off in a span of a month. I was so sorely disappointed that the fifth part wasn't going to be out for a long time that I spent hours conjuring up storylines for it. I have a rule that I don't read the same book twice, but I made a grudging exception for HP. In later years (after all seven were out), I would randomly pick up one of them and flip right to my favorite parts. I remember spending an obscene amount of time on this one website, called hp-lexicon.com, reading up on every little detail and reveling in the eclectic essays posted by crazed fanboys. (BTW, last I heard the owner of hp-lexicon got sued by Rowling over plans of writing an encyclopedia and lost)

The world crafted by Rowling is incredibly imaginative and very complete. Her attention to details is admirable (minor plot points initiated in, say, the second book find resolution in the sixth). Her humor (or humour, I guess, in her honor) is like Diddy Riese cookies: thoroughly delicious and always fresh. Sure she kept readers waiting for answers in the early books - what is up with the diary? Why can Harry talk to snakes? - but the payoff was worth the long waits.

I grew up with the books and it was one hell of a decade living with more books or movies to look forward to. But I guess it must all end at some point. Hope the actors find other good work down the line, and more importantly, Rowling overcomes her firm insistence on not writing anything Harry related. Would love to experience that thrill, that anticipation all over again. 

Charlie Sheen overdose

I am currently suffering from an accidental overdose of Charlie Sheen.

I am sure that, by now, anyone with internet knows that the man originally born as Carlos Irwin Estevez has been phoning in some seriously crazy interviews to loonies on the radio circuit attacking his own TV show "Two and Half laughs men" and its creator Chuck Lorre.


By now, Lorre has been called "Haim Levine", "a Nazi", "punk" and a creator of 177 dumb shows by Sheen, who proudly declared he was clean because he is mentally tough. The actor also challenged anyone to give him a drug test on-screen because he is sure he will ace that thing.

Lorre and CBS accepted the gauntlet and canceled TV's #1 comedy a mere hours after the highly entertaining Sheenfest. Undaunted, Sheen called in a few more interviews today, hollering at the crew to join him in a war against CBS and Lorre. You heard him guys, Uncle Charlie wants you!

Now as if this much exposure to Sheen wasn't enough, I got to see him in Wall Street 2 as well. Almost on a whim, I rented the movie from redbox at my local Ralph's. Friday night, rain, the whole apartment to myself - what better way to spend it than watch a poorly reviewed sequel, right? The movie is predictably droll and although the acting is good (for the most part), the writing is just downright shoddy.

Anyway, Sheen has a brief cameo in the sequel. If you saw the first one, you would know that he played the cutthroat protege in that one, who was ultimately responsible for turning in Michael Douglas' Gordon Gekko.
So here I was, watching this film and they are showing some glitzy charity ball. Gekko is doing the rounds, trying to rehabilitate his image among the snobs and voila! he runs into Sheen's character. True to form, Mr. Sheen is flanked by two ladies, his face bearing his trademark obnoxious smirk. What joy! I burst out laughing and savored that moment for the rest of the film.

And now I am paying the consequences for that overdose.