Happy Birthday J.K.Rowling and her brainchild, Harry Potter!!!31/07/09
Friday, July 31, 2009
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Tyranny of the Toothpicks
I was mall-walking the other day, browsing through stores, running my hand against the soft, smooth fabric of clothes on the rack, giving an approving nod or two and taking in that pleasant fresh scent of new garments.
It's not that I like shopping. Heavens, no.
But it is fun to act skeptic, walking tall among clothes that seem to have been laid down for your final scrutinizing and judgement.
It was when I was examining a rather Cornish-pixie-dotted pair of pants(They really do exist. Check the last display rack, right of the changing rooms.), that a girl walked past; to be precise- a stick of a girl walked past.
She was so rigidly skinny and wrapped in miniature clothes- It made me marvel at the fact that people come in such small sizes.
This is in no way a ridicule of said girl. She merely is an example, or rather a representative of thousands of teenage adolescent girls who have fallen prey to anorexia nervosa.
Yes, yes, we know- Nicky and Paris Hilton, Victoria Beckham, Lindsay Lohan... all disappearing and vanishing before the eyes of the paparazzi and the public, wilting away like yesterday's salad lettuce leaves.
I did a bit of Google Image Searching on anorexia and I nearly needed a bag to puke into when the pictures hit the screen.
There are female beings with limbs that seem to be sticking out of them like oddly bent straws and their skin is stretched faintly over the pile of rickety bones, they call their skeletal structure.
Tripping over some one's feet may end up as hairline fractures for them. Fragile, breakable, light as thin ice, their bones are.
There is no need to starve yourself or take drugs to drop a few dress sizes or loose a couple of extra pounds.
Be happy with your body and you feel lighter already with the weight off your shoulders.
J.K.Rowling once wrote about the 'wanarexia' craze spreading contagiously in clear, logical, pragmatic writing. http://www.jkrowling.com/ is her website where she wrote her article posted in the 'Extra Stuff' section of her website under 'Only for Girls, probably..'
Take a read and think about the whole idea rationally.
Does it matter the size you are? Isn't it more rewarding to be a better person rather than a starved, malnurtioned, underweight product of society.
Your Food, Your Body, Your Future.
It's not that I like shopping. Heavens, no.
But it is fun to act skeptic, walking tall among clothes that seem to have been laid down for your final scrutinizing and judgement.
It was when I was examining a rather Cornish-pixie-dotted pair of pants(They really do exist. Check the last display rack, right of the changing rooms.), that a girl walked past; to be precise- a stick of a girl walked past.
She was so rigidly skinny and wrapped in miniature clothes- It made me marvel at the fact that people come in such small sizes.
This is in no way a ridicule of said girl. She merely is an example, or rather a representative of thousands of teenage adolescent girls who have fallen prey to anorexia nervosa.
Yes, yes, we know- Nicky and Paris Hilton, Victoria Beckham, Lindsay Lohan... all disappearing and vanishing before the eyes of the paparazzi and the public, wilting away like yesterday's salad lettuce leaves.
I did a bit of Google Image Searching on anorexia and I nearly needed a bag to puke into when the pictures hit the screen.
There are female beings with limbs that seem to be sticking out of them like oddly bent straws and their skin is stretched faintly over the pile of rickety bones, they call their skeletal structure.
Tripping over some one's feet may end up as hairline fractures for them. Fragile, breakable, light as thin ice, their bones are.
There is no need to starve yourself or take drugs to drop a few dress sizes or loose a couple of extra pounds.
Be happy with your body and you feel lighter already with the weight off your shoulders.
J.K.Rowling once wrote about the 'wanarexia' craze spreading contagiously in clear, logical, pragmatic writing. http://www.jkrowling.com/ is her website where she wrote her article posted in the 'Extra Stuff' section of her website under 'Only for Girls, probably..'
Take a read and think about the whole idea rationally.
Does it matter the size you are? Isn't it more rewarding to be a better person rather than a starved, malnurtioned, underweight product of society.
Your Food, Your Body, Your Future.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Happy Families: Not Just A Game
Quite a while back, I saw a rather interesting episode of Ugly Betty. Its thirty minute lifespan questioned the very essence of the concept of family and prodded intriguing questions about what really makes a family a family.
After the customary shenanigans were undertaken like any good sitcom/soap, the closing scene zoomed in on America Ferrera, who was sitting and contemplating beneath the summer moon.
Family, she thought, is not always made of blood-related people. You are not tied to family by blood but love. Your neighbour, your teacher, your best friend… all these little people in your life who make a big difference, though not even distantly related to you, can be a part of that conglomeration of love, that we call family. Families can be eccentric but what makes it a family is the fact that they accept you for who you are and don't ask you to change even for the world.
So as the credits rolled past the screen, I sat there lost in thought with a hint of a smile on my face. There was something about that message- the tone, the style of expression, the message itself?- that flickered into existence like a candle of truth.
True, they say your immediate family is 'your family' as they love you, care for you, understand your every thought and emotion, know you more than you know yourself and encourages you all the way, believing you are capable of accomplishing the impossible. The trust they harbour is impenetrable.
Yet not every family is the dream family that seems to worm its way into every fairytale.
But sometimes, if you feel deserted and alone and you feel alien in your dysfunctional family, you can always depend upon your 'family'; your true friends, your dog or even like in Ugly Betty, your gay work colleague. They'll always be there lending their hand, their shoulder and their heart at your disposal.
Your true family is the one that says you don't need to change the person you are. They accept you without any grudges and they believe and have faith in you. Courtesy is not a word they know but they do have dictionaries with the phrases 'eternal friendship', 'make yourself at home' and 'I truly love you' and sometimes call you their son/daughter absent-mindedly. They may scold you for raiding their fridge and you'd probably know their pantry more than you do yours.
Families are more than a group of tight knit blood relatives who spend their lives with each other. They are like little units of love and friendship consisting of any possible member that make up this world, a little love at a time.
After the customary shenanigans were undertaken like any good sitcom/soap, the closing scene zoomed in on America Ferrera, who was sitting and contemplating beneath the summer moon.
Family, she thought, is not always made of blood-related people. You are not tied to family by blood but love. Your neighbour, your teacher, your best friend… all these little people in your life who make a big difference, though not even distantly related to you, can be a part of that conglomeration of love, that we call family. Families can be eccentric but what makes it a family is the fact that they accept you for who you are and don't ask you to change even for the world.
So as the credits rolled past the screen, I sat there lost in thought with a hint of a smile on my face. There was something about that message- the tone, the style of expression, the message itself?- that flickered into existence like a candle of truth.
True, they say your immediate family is 'your family' as they love you, care for you, understand your every thought and emotion, know you more than you know yourself and encourages you all the way, believing you are capable of accomplishing the impossible. The trust they harbour is impenetrable.
Yet not every family is the dream family that seems to worm its way into every fairytale.
But sometimes, if you feel deserted and alone and you feel alien in your dysfunctional family, you can always depend upon your 'family'; your true friends, your dog or even like in Ugly Betty, your gay work colleague. They'll always be there lending their hand, their shoulder and their heart at your disposal.
Your true family is the one that says you don't need to change the person you are. They accept you without any grudges and they believe and have faith in you. Courtesy is not a word they know but they do have dictionaries with the phrases 'eternal friendship', 'make yourself at home' and 'I truly love you' and sometimes call you their son/daughter absent-mindedly. They may scold you for raiding their fridge and you'd probably know their pantry more than you do yours.
Families are more than a group of tight knit blood relatives who spend their lives with each other. They are like little units of love and friendship consisting of any possible member that make up this world, a little love at a time.
Sleepless: Wicked Wakefulness
Insomnia.
It's nearly 4 A.M. in the morning and I'm by my laptop wide awake in a deadly silent household, armed with pathetic re-runs of sitcoms and a rather bulky comforter wrapped across my shoulders.
It's practically unearthly as I look around and notice that everything in the surroundings has this pre-dawn eerie bluish glow emanating from them.
I'm wide-eyed and conscious as any Tuesday workaholic who is high on caffeine yet unable to do anything but sit at the glare of my screen in the dark.
Bathed in blue light, I can only imagine the horrific thought of having someone suddenly burst into the room, glaring at me with insanely terrifying eyes.
At this point, I remember a small snippet of information that many people normally don't remember in the wee hours of a lonely morning. An interesting fact- The Anglo-Saxons deeply believed that a miraculous remedy for insomnia is eating lettuce. Yes, Lettuce.
They believed that gnawing on green leafy vegetables could ward away and dispel the likes of sleep deprivation.
Hilarious, isn't it?
Now, you must excuse me. I seem to be in search of lettuce which is probably somewhere buried deep in my refrigerator.
I'm an insomniac.
I'm desperate.
It's nearly 4 A.M. in the morning and I'm by my laptop wide awake in a deadly silent household, armed with pathetic re-runs of sitcoms and a rather bulky comforter wrapped across my shoulders.
It's practically unearthly as I look around and notice that everything in the surroundings has this pre-dawn eerie bluish glow emanating from them.
I'm wide-eyed and conscious as any Tuesday workaholic who is high on caffeine yet unable to do anything but sit at the glare of my screen in the dark.
Bathed in blue light, I can only imagine the horrific thought of having someone suddenly burst into the room, glaring at me with insanely terrifying eyes.
At this point, I remember a small snippet of information that many people normally don't remember in the wee hours of a lonely morning. An interesting fact- The Anglo-Saxons deeply believed that a miraculous remedy for insomnia is eating lettuce. Yes, Lettuce.
They believed that gnawing on green leafy vegetables could ward away and dispel the likes of sleep deprivation.
Hilarious, isn't it?
Now, you must excuse me. I seem to be in search of lettuce which is probably somewhere buried deep in my refrigerator.
I'm an insomniac.
I'm desperate.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Potter Hungry
My Marathons are thinning out and I'm almost out of Harry Potter material.
If this keeps up, I might have a breakdown before the movie even gets to the screen :D
Honestly, why does time deliberately lethargically crawl by when something amazing is on the other side?
It's like Biology class before Break.
I've logged on to Muggglenet countless times now and even have the countdown toolbar flashing on my desktop!
So Close, Yet So Far!
After nearly a year and a half of waiting, it all comes down to this.
The Tomatometer on Rotten Tomates.com rates this movie extremely high, a rare occurence for movies; so this pumps up my adrenaline to bursting point!
HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF BLOOD PRINCE!!!!!
Less than 24 hours!
If this keeps up, I might have a breakdown before the movie even gets to the screen :D
Honestly, why does time deliberately lethargically crawl by when something amazing is on the other side?
It's like Biology class before Break.
I've logged on to Muggglenet countless times now and even have the countdown toolbar flashing on my desktop!
So Close, Yet So Far!
After nearly a year and a half of waiting, it all comes down to this.
The Tomatometer on Rotten Tomates.com rates this movie extremely high, a rare occurence for movies; so this pumps up my adrenaline to bursting point!
HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF BLOOD PRINCE!!!!!
Less than 24 hours!
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Counting down...
If you've ever been to Mugglenet, you'll be acquainted with the countdown toolbar pasted at the header of the the website. For months, the clock has been ticking(and quite infuriartingly it was set back after the 'postponing' chaos).
Fans have eagerly watched the numbers dwindle slowly day after day, finally becoming one digit numbers.
It is thus, historic to watch the number 1 flash on the screen as the number of days left for the movie.
Fans have eagerly watched the numbers dwindle slowly day after day, finally becoming one digit numbers.
It is thus, historic to watch the number 1 flash on the screen as the number of days left for the movie.
I'm beyond myself with excitement, dwiddling my thumbs in anxious ecstasy whilst reading the book or seeing the movies to make fruitful use of the time(which seems dreadfully slow) before the film hits the Big Screen.
The first shows have been sold out and the streets are once more filled with long, winding, unending queues of people in cloaks and wizard hats, brandishing wands.
So till Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince opens at theatres, keep practising those wand movvements.... Swish and Flick!
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Movie Marathon: Potter Preparations
Harry Potter Movie Marathons. Classic way to make up a big finale drum roll upto the sixth part. It keeps us busy and brings back all the old laughter and memory.
The most fun part of watching the movies for Harry Potter fans is ironically, finding the inaccuracies and standing up in the theatre, yelling at the screen 'That was never there in the books', throwing a shoe and getting a warning from the obese security guard with his glowering stare in torchlight. A bit of a Mugglenet joke there.
The Internet is littered with little snippets and videoclips of the movie. But what's the fun of watching the movie after two years of impatience if you're going to see all the crucial/hilarious/intense moments on YouTube, just the day before the release date?
B-Rolls are like a movie massacre; squandering all the good scenes of the anticipated movie.
I'm nearly done with my Marathon by the way! Even though I've watched them countless times, it's just so thrilling to see them all over again, seeing their little innocent faces morph into mature grown-up stars, seeing the magic brew more powerful, seeing the legacy of Harry Potter scrolled out in spectacular fashion- where reality meets fiction.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Brushing up: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince- the Essential Re-re-re-read
Obviously with the movie on the way, re-reads are a crucial must-do for any Harry Potter fan.A serving of Quidditch, a dose of Felix Felicis, a vial of memories and the good ol' cauldron of mystery and adventure... ahh, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.
Now, shhh..... I'm trying to read here!
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Potter's Great Expectations
While the anticipation grows to heightened pitch, interviews from various actors and actresses that have had the envious fortune of working on the set of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince are flooding newspapers and fan sites as devoted aficionados scramble about for even slivers of information.
The midnight shows across the USA have been sold out and the box office is predicting a colossal hit, raking in dollars by the million.
With an undoubtedly propitious premiere, the bar has been set sky high.
Now the million dollar question is... Will it live up to the Hype?
The midnight shows across the USA have been sold out and the box office is predicting a colossal hit, raking in dollars by the million.
With an undoubtedly propitious premiere, the bar has been set sky high.
Now the million dollar question is... Will it live up to the Hype?
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Potter Premieres: Wild, Wet and Wonderful!
The Potter Premieres in the UK and the USA went off spectacularly with hundreds of fans descending upon Leicester Square and the equivalent venue in the USA to witness the star studded red carpet event, which turned out a huge success with an unexpected twist or two!
A rather gloomy, black cloud seemed to hover over Leicester Square and shake down torrential rain.
The resulting downpour did soak the actors and actresses as they hurried up the red carpet, waving and cheering and signing autographs to a booming, screaming, mad crowd( half of which was painted red and gold).
A rather gloomy, black cloud seemed to hover over Leicester Square and shake down torrential rain.
The resulting downpour did soak the actors and actresses as they hurried up the red carpet, waving and cheering and signing autographs to a booming, screaming, mad crowd( half of which was painted red and gold).
Whilst a few enjoyed the atmosphere of yelling fans under an umbrella others like Rupert Grint was quite literally hopping about in the rain puddles to the delight of his aficionados.
The most pleasing outcome of these premiers is no doubt the critics' review. Now that's an uncommon comment!
The critics and reviewers loved the movie and had an analysis raving about the sixth installment of the Harry Potter movie franchise.
Fans now are eager more than ever, if that's possible! Over the moon happy!
And that goes for me as well.
Voracious viewers- we are watching with a vulture appetite at the countdown, ready to relish what David Yates and his cast and crew have to offer us- Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince-The Movie!
Friday, July 10, 2009
PotterWatch
4 days left for the blockbuster summer movie of the year!
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince is slotted for release on 15th July, after being rescheduled from the initial launch date- 21st November 2008.
Yes, the act of postponing the film caused outrage among us fans, having waited eagerly, starved of Harry Potter for well over a year. (Except for The Tales of Beedle The Bard, which was fantastic and just in time for Christmas!)
So finally, after two years, Warner Brothers delivers the movie adaptation of the penultimate book in the Harry Potter series in what critics acclaim as the 'best yet of the first six movies'.
Harry Potter movies have quite recently been notorious for disappointment, quite understandable due to the pumped up hype and the intense speculation that these movies are scrutinised with.
However, I was quite thrilled when the tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes measured a solid red bar of 96% and a 7.4 rating- which if you are new to the 'rotten tomatoes concept' is a stupendous feat.
So with hopes running high along with the adrenaline and the gigantic promotion and premiering of the film, I, along with the millions of Harry Potter fans in the world, wait on tenterhooks for midnight of 14th July to draw closer and arrive with a breathtaking bang!
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince is slotted for release on 15th July, after being rescheduled from the initial launch date- 21st November 2008.
Yes, the act of postponing the film caused outrage among us fans, having waited eagerly, starved of Harry Potter for well over a year. (Except for The Tales of Beedle The Bard, which was fantastic and just in time for Christmas!)
So finally, after two years, Warner Brothers delivers the movie adaptation of the penultimate book in the Harry Potter series in what critics acclaim as the 'best yet of the first six movies'.
Harry Potter movies have quite recently been notorious for disappointment, quite understandable due to the pumped up hype and the intense speculation that these movies are scrutinised with.
However, I was quite thrilled when the tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes measured a solid red bar of 96% and a 7.4 rating- which if you are new to the 'rotten tomatoes concept' is a stupendous feat.
So with hopes running high along with the adrenaline and the gigantic promotion and premiering of the film, I, along with the millions of Harry Potter fans in the world, wait on tenterhooks for midnight of 14th July to draw closer and arrive with a breathtaking bang!
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Block it out
The writer's cramp is still seething with biting pain. It just won't go.
The infuriating void has settled and my brain feels hollow.
It seems my best ideas keep coming when I'm doing something rather taxing to my brain.
It's probably like a little escape from say, my studies, that I think creatively with my imagination full swing.
Like the left hemisphere and right hemisphere of my brain is in eternal civil war and conflict.
I think television has warped my insides and I'm slowly mutating into a mindless, gibbering couch potato devoid of any spark of talent and creation.
God help me.
The infuriating void has settled and my brain feels hollow.
It seems my best ideas keep coming when I'm doing something rather taxing to my brain.
It's probably like a little escape from say, my studies, that I think creatively with my imagination full swing.
Like the left hemisphere and right hemisphere of my brain is in eternal civil war and conflict.
I think television has warped my insides and I'm slowly mutating into a mindless, gibbering couch potato devoid of any spark of talent and creation.
God help me.
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