Weekend Late Night Movie

Last night I watched this 1953 French Classic The Wages of Fear ( Salaire de la peur,Le) directed by Henri-Georges Cloutzot. This movie is based on a novel by George Arnaud. This story is set in a town called Las Piedras in South America.Southern Oil Company (SOC) enlists four tough drifters for a high paying suicide mission. The mission involves transporting nitroglycerin an explosive liquid across a rough terrain, to one of the SOC oil fields to quell the fire.Tension and rivalry quickly develops between the foursome, magnified by the unforgiving heat, the lure of the filthy lucre and the rough and rocky roads where the slightest jolt can result in agonising death. This movie is really thrilling especially when the drivers have to navigate around the obstacles. But it ends in a tragic way, I would have wanted to see a happy ending. The movie stars Yves Montand,Charles Vanel,Vera Clouzot,William Tubbs, Folco Lulli and Peter Van Eyck.The movie has won many awards see the list below.

Palme d'OR,Cannes-Grand Prize of the festival

Golden Bear,Berlin-Henri-Georges Cloutzot

BAFTA award-Best Film from any Source

The Tree of Life and the Seasons.

This is an amazing tree opposite my apartment. This tree is like a barometre for the current season. And this is a Winter pic in Chennai.Talking about seasons I saw this movie called "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring" a 2003 Korean movie directed by Kim Ki-duk.Its about a Buddhist monastery floating on a lake in a pristine valley. The location is simple awesome. The story tracks the life of a young monk through the seasons of his life from childhood to old age.This movie has won several awards.

Weekend Exploits food,books and movies

Dec19,Fri:

M2 and me usually eat out during the weekend. This Friday as usual we decided to eat out. We stopped by at Bombay Blue with a tag line which goes" Mumbai ka dil, Duniya Ka taste".This is located at college road in Chennai. For starters this isn't a pure vegetarian restaurant, anyways we decided to try our luck. We ordered the Chef's vegetarian tandoori platter.The platter had the usual tandoori cauliflower,paneer,mushroom,bean curd etc. M2 is a pure vegetarian and has an incredible sense of taste and smell. He usually does not eat mushrooms. This time around he promptly popped the mushroom in his mouth. Soon he started squirming his face.It wasn't because of the mushroom per se but he could distinctively smell non-vegetarian in it.I don't know how. The mushroom and the potato tandoor did taste a little funny.We immediately decided to leave the place.M2 will never visit this place again.

Next we went to New Yorker at Nugambakkam.We ordered a starter which had onion rings, corn cheese balls and besan cutlet. This was ok but the besan cutlet was under cooked. Next we ordered a capsicum pizza. Unfortunately for us the pizza base was a little charred and I did not like the pizza very much( this is coming from a pizza lover). On the whole our Friday eat out was jinxed. There are certainly other nice things to eat at New Yorker. We have to choose wisely next time.

Dec20,Sat:

In the evening we went to Citi Centre. We hoped to buy some DVDs from Landmark instead I picked up some books like Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche and a bird encyclopedia.We ate at Sangeetha Desi Mane. The food was good. We ordered aloo chat,special sambar rice, masala rawa dosai and kadubu with mangalorean sambar. The kadubu was very filling.We got home and watched Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile.M2 wanted to watch this because he wanted to see Egypt.The movie won an Oscar for best costume design in 1979.

Dec21,Sun:

I made some yummy parangikai( yellow pumpkin) sambar. We watched another movie Europa Europa directed by Agnieszka Holland. This is based on a true story of Solomon Perel a Jewish, who survives by posing as a German during World War 2.It won a Golden Globe, for the Best Foreign Film in 1992 .After this we went to Sweet Chariot at Ispahani Centre. We ordered for strawberry cheese cake and black forest cake. No great shakes though!.We ended the weekend revelry with maggie noodles. Thanx M2 for a great weekend.

Smitten by Cillian Murphy

I saw this movie called intermission(2003) yesterday.I was totally smitten by the characters distinctive blue eyes. I found out later that they belonged to Cillian Murphy an Irish theatre and film actor. He plays the character called John a lovelorn, hapless supermarket stocker who plots a bank heist with Collin Farrell.I have previously seen his movie Red eye(2005) where he plays Jackson Rippner. !!I had a cat called blue eyes he was an incredible cat. So I basically love blue eyes.