Feasting

Got done with the three Tamil movies. Ghajini is OK, and I am really interested now in seeing how Aamir Khan scores over Surya. Asin seems like the best thing to be about to happen to Hindi movies in sometime.

Aayitha Ezhuthu was good and, as a friend had told me some time back, better than Yuva. But the best of the lot was Ghilli.

It's an out and out masala film with mindless violence and Prakash Raj doing a typical hamming villain. But I still loved it. I can't recall right now enjoying an unapologetically commercial movie so much in Hindi in the last few years. For some reason, Vijay's antics made me think of Govinda, before his movies got vulgar. He can carry off any damn thing and make it look good. Need to watch more of his movies.

Rapidshare, along with some good people who upload movies on to the internet, has helped me acquire some movies that I had long been searching for. And there are so many more that I am sure are there somewhere and just need proper searching.

One such movie was this one called Mondo Cane. As Wikipedia puts it, Mondo Cane "consists of a series of travelogue vignettes providing glimpses into cultural practices throughout the world intended to shock or surprise the mostly Western film audience, including an insect banquet and a memorable look at a practicing South Pacific cargo cult." This one and the series that it spawned was referred to by John Waters in his 1969 comedy Mondo Trasho. John Waters, as the knowledgable would know is the great man behind that ultimate classic, Pink Flamingos, and several lesser known movies of the ilk.

I am half through Mondo Cane and I have already seen pigs being beaten to death in New Guinea for a mass feast, snakes being skinned alive in Singapore for a homely meal, dogs being chopped in a Taipei restaurant, sharks being fed poisonous sea-urchins and then left to die painfully over a week for their fins, geese being force-fed and kept in small cages to prevent burning of calories to prepare foie-gras, and similar enlightening stuff. Positively stomach-churning.

Human beings should really show a little more empathy towards animals. I think I'll take a break for sometime before resuming the movie.

Time for some yummy Kentucky Fried Chicken right now.