Blogger Meetup

And so here is the umpteenth post on the Kottu meetup at Barefoot. First of all a thank you to Indi for organising the event and playing host, it was really good to meet up and put faces on certain people and make some sort of human connection that wouldn't otherwise occur, also a big thank you to Dom and Naz for giving the space and, despite giving love to certain cinematic travesty, interesting and enlightning conversation..

Mahangu has a pretty accurate roundup of the crowd present- though I can't say I love being ghettoized by my age.. Still, he was part of a group of very cool people I met- amongst them: Indi, Ru, and many other nameless people. Also great to see more familiar faces like Electra and Deshan. I think I may not have spoken to as many people as I should have but I did find myself not once, but twice, in theoratical conversations about blogging, and on one occasion it was with Yanik and Asvi- so I guess it worked?

All in all, I enjoyed the experience- between the free-flowing alcohol and conversation, it was a great time. Something that should definitley happen again. Perhaps most important was the gathering of some idea of what the blogsphere in Colombo is like and, of course, getting drunk in the evening

Prose! Where were you?

The Two Natashas

A moment to celebrate the two Natashas in my life, Perera and Thompson, both beautiful, intelligent and funny

To celebrate Natasha (Perera/a.k.a. Melbourne) I give you, first, a photograph of herself and I on our way to being completely wasted, and secondly, a bad bad poem penned by my beloved Kanya and Danielle about her

'An Ode to Tashi'

Her voice is thin like the air,
There’s hay in my barn like her hair,
She lives at the Plaza,
We call her Kepasha,
…
My favourite time of day
Is when she drops by to say
“I have class”
(Class my arse),
Her brother is Rocky
He is quite cocky

Next up, we have the other Tashi, pictured here as a thank you for being a faithful and persistent reader...

Sorry I haven't posted in a while but I'm staying at my Dad's and internet access is a bitch-will make more of an effort in the future...

There's also a serious lack of things to write about so I've decided to steal Asvi's format and do the list thing...

20 Greatest Films of All Time (IMO)
01. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
02. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
03. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1927)
04. Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)
05. 8 ½ (Frederico Fellini, 1963)
06. Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942)
07. Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
08. Jules and Jim (Francois Truffaut, 1962)
09. Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, 1978)
10. Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954)
11. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959)
12. The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
13. Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950)
14. Manhattan (Woody Allen, 1979)
15. Les Enfants Du Paradis (Marcel Carné, 1945)
16. Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)
17. Singin' in the Rain (Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, 1952)
18. Taste of Cherry (Abbas Kiarostami, 1997)
19. The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)
20. Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)

25 Favourite Songs of All Time(1 song per Artist)

1. I Heard It Through the Grapevine, Marvin Gaye
2. A Day in the Life, The Beatles
3. Like a Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan
4. Love Will Tear Us Apart, Joy Division
5. Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine, James Brown
6. Jolene, Dolly Parton
7. Working Class Hero, John Lennon
8. Respect, Aretha Franklin
9. Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd
10. Anarchy in the U.K., The Sex Pistols
11. Life on Mars?, David Bowie
12. Fever, Elvis Presley
13. The Needle and the Damage Done, Neil Young
14. Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough, Michael Jackson
15. Needle in the Hay, Elliott Smith
16. Talk Show Host, Radiohead
17. Nashville, Liz Phair
18. Romeo is Bleeding, Tom Waits
19. Regulate, Warren G. featuring Nate Dogg
20. Like a Prayer, Madonna
21. Atlantic City, Bruce Springsteen
22. Galang, M.I.A.
23. Money Changes Everything, Cyndi Lauper
24. Stay, Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs
25. Wuthering Heights, Kate Bush

Top 25 Favourite Artists

1. The Beatles
2. Bob Dylan
3. Radiohead
4. PJ Harvey
5. David Bowie
6. Tom Waits
7. The Clash
8. Madonna
9. Prince
10. Johnny Cash
11. Björk
12. The Smiths
13. Pink Floyd
14. Michael Jackson
15. Neil Young
16. Beck
17. The Rolling Stones
18. The Sex Pistols
19. Public Enemy
20. M.I.A.
21. Bruce Springsteen
22. Jay-Z
23. Van Morisson
24. Outkast
25. Nirvana

Top 5 Favourtie TV Series

1. The Sopranos
2. Seinfeld
3. The Simpsons
4. Arrested Development
5. Twin Peaks

Top 10 Cunts Alive

1. Dick Cheney
2. George W. Bush
3. Osama Bin Laden
4. Mel Gibson
5. Mahinda Rajapakse
6. Bill O'Reily
7. Tom Cruise
8. Usher
9. Barbara Streisand
10. Taylor Hicks

American Idol- this week

1. Katharine
2. Chris
3. Melissa
4. Mandisa
5. Paris
6. Elliott
7. Kelly
8. Ace
9. Lisa
10. Bucky
11. Taylor
12. Kevin

1-6 range from good to great while 7-8 range were all various degrees of apalling

That's all for now, folks, I guess I'll be seeing some of you at this thing at Barefoot..

MY Winners

Time to set things straight (no pun intended)

Best Picture

Brokeback Mountain

Best Director

Ang Lee for Brokeback Mountain

Best Actor in a Leading Role

Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain

Best Actress in a Leading Role

Joan Allen in The Upside of Anger

Best Actor in a Supporting Role

Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain

Best Actress in a Supporting Role

Ziyi Zhang in 2046

Best Foreign Language Film

Downfall by Oliver Hirschbiegel (Germany)

Best Animated Feature

Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Were-Rabbit by Nick Park and Steve Box

Best Documentary Feature

Grizzly Man by Werner Herzog

Best Original Screenplay

Junebug written by Angus MacLachlan

Best Adapted Screenplay

Brokeback Mountain screenplay by Larry McMutry and Diana Ossana

Best Costume Design

The New World, Jacqueline West

Best Cinematography

The New World, Emmanuel Lubezki

Best Art Direction

Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, Alex McDowell; Colin Batty

Best Film Editing

A History of Violence, Ronald Sanders

Best Makeup

The New World, Paul Engelen and Joani Yarbrough

Best Original Score

Brokeback Mountain, Gustavo Santaolalla

Best Original Song

TransAmerica for the song 'Travelin' Thru'

Music and lyrics by Dolly Parton

Best Sound

Walk the Line, Paul Massey and Peter F. Kurland

Best Sound Editing

King Kong, Mike Hopkins and Ethan Van der Ryn

Best Visual Effects

Sin City, Robert Rodriguez

Best Ensemble Cast

Junebug

Amy Adams, Embeth Davidtz, Benjamin McKenzie, Alessandro Nivola, Frank Hoyt Taylor, Celia Weston and Scott Wilson

Crash

While I initially didn't feel the need to write about this film, the things I'm reading on other blogs makes me want to explain just why I dislike this Oscar winner. Crash is a mediocrity- to call it anymore is simply ridiculous. The film won because of its sugar-coated ending and its big bright message of 'You're a racist, but don't worry! So is everyone else', Haggis tries to tackle a complex idea and then completely butchers it by giving into soap opera antics- the fact is that the idea that we all harbour some prejudices is hardly groundbreaking and the film's focus on such broard examples of racism simply ignores the fact that most of this racism occurs in far more subtle ways, and the film simply allows that sort of subtle racism to permeate by ignoring it as an issue. Crash's popularity seems to stem from the fact that, unlike the other big issue movies of 2005 (Brokeback, GNAGL, Munich, even Capote with the death penalty), Haggis can't grasp how to present his agenda with subtlety and through his story without being condescending to his audience. Lee, Clooney and Spielberg all manage to tackle BIG issues in their films without having the films BECOME about the issue, instead presenting different view points through subtext. Crash, on the other hand, takes its agenda like a big mallet into its hands and bangs it repeatedly on your head until the message of the film is DEAFENINGLY clear. Also, how can anyone respect any film that rips off an entire sequence (that would be the one pictured above) from another film? Replace 'In the Deep' with 'Wise Up' and the snow with the frogs and you've got Magnolia. Another thing, I'd be hard pressed to find a more hysterical moment in cinema last year than when Sandra Bullock takes her magical tumble down the stairs to find... she's not a racist anymore!

Now go google "I'm glad Crash won" and see what happens..

Fuck the Oscars

Really, that's all I have to say.

Oh wait, fuck Crash (a.k.a. as liberal white guilt)