spinning independence, drawing lines and the stinging aquatic

On July 04, 2004, I found myself doing stuff I had never done before, had never ever planned to do. I was at Lenox Mall in the evening. I was listening to the Spin Doctors live. And I didn't even know they were the real deal until they said so. And then I was watching the fireworks. The smell of beer and overpriced junk food permeated the proceedings, and the crowds filled me with dread. But the brief display of light was a minor consolation. Synchronized[sic] with patriotic songs from different genres of popular music (e.g. Bruce Springsteen, Ray Charles -- in a timely manner), these blasts were fun to watch. What was really cool was how the explosions of colour unfurled down on you just like the inhabitants of the machine world in The Matrix: Revolutions.

Lakeer: Forbidden Lines marks the lacklustre insomnia-curing directorial début of dance director Ahmed Khan. If only he had remained the guy who came up with the cool moves of Rangeela. A R Rahman returns the favour with a soundtrack that competes with Tehzeeb for lifelessness, and other sub-standard Rahman fare for inanity. The opening credits are cool, but what ensues is a tale of love, rivalry that seems like a watered-down version of Mukul Anand's Mahasangram. And that one had much better songs from Anand-Milind. Ahmed Khan does not choreograph a single one of the sequences of wasted footage. Raj Zutshi sports an interesting look. Suniel Shetty continues to provide an example of the success of the poor man's Peter Principle. The background score rips off Nirvana's Smells like Teen Spirit for a basketball match. And a Sunny Deol stunt rips off John Woo's Hard Target, if only in spirit. And you are even rewarded for your patience with a subtitle that reads "are you angry? (reel 4)". Touché and stay away.

My first visit to the Fernbank Museum was marked by a long romp through the Walk through Time in Georgia exhibit. The realistic recreations of the geological variety of Georgia were cool, and I managed to catch most of The Genomic Revolution. Marking an interval between these two walks was my first IMAX experience: a movie called Dolphins, a rather superficial "aren't dolphins cute" narrative dominated by a voiceover by Pierce Brosnan (who probably did it for the $$$), and adaptations and fragments from Sting's songs. Which meant that instead of enjoying the cute goings-on seen elsewhere a million times, I was tagging each piece of music heard, and running through a chronology of Sting's music in my head. Damn!