Top coppy

"Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya punk?"
Ever since I watched Clint Eastwood growl those words, I have been sold on the badge and bullets genre. There is something about a good cop movie ... here are my favourite cops in no particular order.

Bud White: This was before he won an Oscar for wearing a short skirt in Gladiator. Russell Crowe as the brooding Bud White who doesn't always play by the book. White has a beef with creeps who abuse women and doesn't quite shy away from using violence to counter violence. LA Confidential is about good cops and bad cops against a setting of debauchery and stardust in tinsel town and Bud White is the toughest knuckle on the mean streets.

Frank Serpico: Sydney Lumet's masterpiece on corruption in the NYPD is one of the greatest cop movies ever. Al Pacino is Francisco Serpico, the ramrod straight cop, who exposes the corrupt underbelly of the force. The entire department turns against Serpico, leaving him hanging on to his life and sanity. Pacino, in one of his greatest roles, was described by a critic as "tiny terror".

Harry Callahan: "Go ahead, make my day," growls Harry Callahan, legs akimbo, hands ready to whip out that .44 magnum. Clint Eastwood, walked straight out of the Spaghetti Westerns and into the sewers of San Francisco as Dirty Harry, the original urban cowboy. Harry is an equal-opportunity bigot, a cop who bends the law to enforce it. Eastwood is rivetting as the narrow-eyed, tough talking gun-slinger.

Frank Bullitt: The uber cool Steve McQueen is Lt.Frank Bullitt in the most iconic cop movie of all. Set in 60s San Francisco, Bullitt has McQueen assigned to protect a Mafia squeal on whom the mob has taken out a hit. The movie features one of the greatest car chases ever and as the laconic Frank Bullitt, McQueen delivers a sparkling, alpha male presence.

Donnie Brasco: Johnny Depp was never more slicker than playing Joe Pistone aka Donnie Brasco the undercover cop who infiltrates the Bonano mob in Brooklyn. Depp is pitted against Pacino who plays Lefty Ruggiero a small time hood who is Brasco's entry into the mob. It's tough to outshine Pacino in a mob movie, but Depp does it effortlessly with plenty to spare.

Will have a worst cop movie list sometime ... stay tuned.

At the altar of dreams

The culvert where the road curves before going its merry way still stands. For you it's a block of concrete, for me it's the altar where a million dreams were laid out ... some fulfilled, some long shattered.
We spent many a teenage evening around it, wondering where life would take us. Would we be rich, would we find love, would we die trying. We were many, all in different stages of existential confusion. We smoked, argued, fought, won and lost our way to adulthood. The culvert stood mute witness to some boys turning men and some just bobbing with the tide. As I drive away from my childhood, I see a bunch of young boys settle down on the culvert, laughing, ribbing, dreaming. I watch them in my rearview mirror, new dreams being set on cold concrete.

Third eye blink

I am the eye in the sky
Looking at you
I can read your mind
Since life began in the Garden of Eden, man has been writing about the mystic beauty of the human eye. From Cleopatra to Bette Davis and across the high seas to Waheeda Rehman, those eyes have inspired hypnotic verse.
If two eyes didn't inspire enough, there is a third. In Hindu and Buddhist mythology, the enlightened ones had a divine third eye. Buddha has a third eye or the Urna, a symbol of wisdom; Shiva's third is the eye of destruction, when it opens it is apocalypse.
Interestingly, in Greek mythology, the third eye has a glint of evil. Cyclops, uneducated creature with an extra eye in the forehead, is a mean beast of immense strength and a flaky temper. You would have met some of his family in the LOTR flicks.
Conceding that mythology is as much fantasy as reality, it is still fascinating how cultures as diverse as Chinese and Greek, have references to the mythical third eye. Apparently, as late as the 60s, the flower children could connect with their third eye through a magic potion brewed out of the Beatles, LSD and good old fashioned whiskey. Don't try it at home.

Angels and demons

"If you kill off all my demons ... my angels might die too."

How frigging true Tennessee ...

Railroad freeze

Trans Siberian is a sinister rail movie, much like Hitchcock's Murder on the Orient Express but not quite the same vintage. However, this is not about the movie. There is a leg on the Trans Siberian Railway which connects Ulan Ude in Russia to the Chinese city of Jining. This leg is actually covered by the Trans Mongolian Railway and it cuts through some of the coldest and most desolate parts of the world.
Since the rail gauge in Russia is 1520 mm and the one in China is 1200 mm, the wheels of the rail carriages have to be physically changed at the border. Each carriage has to be physically hauled up and the wheels changed. It takes hours for this to be done while the passengers wait frozen in time.

Bullish on the Ox year

It's crawling towards that time of the year when you set your chin firmly and resolve to be less of an idiot next year. I usually fail hopelessly but I am not the type who gives up.

Here's my "get better or claim refund" agenda for 09. Terms and conditions apply.

Not hurl my remote control at the TV set when I see Arnab Goswami, Barkha Butt, Aishwariya Rai and other annoying people. For one, it doesn't hit them -- and TV sets -- I discovered, break when you throw things at it.

Not laugh at people who wear wigs. It's rude I realise and it must be tough to shampoo.

Also not laugh at fat people who jog on the streets. With practice they might get fast enough to catch you and paste you. Not safe.

Pick up one posh habit. Like become a posh environmentalist ... drink green tea, listen to some organic music that sounds like monkey mating calls.

Get rid of one bad habit ... like calling Karan Johar gay. They don't want him either, I am told.

And finally to find and take up one cause I genuinely believe in. I am thinking of the right to not pay tax if the Government can't ensure that I am safe in my own country.

Keep you posted.

Sing it aloud Bobby

Bob Dylan's Someday Baby is No. 37 on Rolling Stones' Best singles of 2008 list. The alternate version of the track from Modern Times has climbed steadily to find a perch among the top 50 of the year. For the record, Modern Times, the album, had raced to No.1 on release in 2006.
And my point is?
My point is Dylan is just about a year younger than God. He has been America's rasping voice of unrest since 1959 and some. And he continues to write and sing about changing times and continues to teach people quarter his age a thing or two about writing music. There ain't no songwriter like Dylan and if there is one, I haven't heard him ... or her.
Don't hang up that harmonica Bob, coz the times they are a changing still and we need someone to sing it out to us.