Raja's Blog

(Thoughts on watching this movie for the second time, on our newly-purchased DVD.)

This is an excellent and dark film that, unusually for fantasy mysteries, includes a favorite touch of mine from Back to the Future II (hope that isn't too much of a spoiler). If I had read the book more than once it's possible I might be offended by the differences between book and film, but I haven't, so I'm ok ;-). While I give tremendous credit to the cast and crew of this film (and I'd like to add to the praise of director Alfonso Cuarón, who unfortunately won't be directing the next film in this series), I'm with the overflowing ranks of the literate who also give tremendous credit to J. K. Rowling for doing such an excellent and dark fantasy that also works as a fair mystery (i.e., the clues are there for you to find them).

For the historical record dept: At this point in our lives (December 2004), we were watching three excellent TV shows on DVD—Buffy Season Seven; Alias Season Three (generously loaned to us by Ignacio and Dr. Ana); and The West Wing Seasons 1 and 2 (generously loaned to us by Matt & Kat). They're all among the best of their genres; Buffy has the strongest characters and, therefore, to me the most heartbreaking storylines; Alias is high-speed beautiful people engaged in espionage; The West Wing is wall-to-wall intelligent people overworking to help the country the best they possibly can. As of this writing (3:42 AM December 27 2004; who knows when Blogger will be up to receive it as a posting?), we finished Buffy (and I feel a certain coldness in my life because there'll [probably] never be any more) and Alias Three (apparently Season Four will be on broadcast TV next month; I probably won't watch it until the DVDs); we're somewhere near episode 9 of The West Wing Season Two.

The average episode of any one of these is much better written (even Alias, which I would have considered the clear "runt" of this litter, until this season showed that creator JJ Abrams clearly did plan ahead; this season has made the show as a whole up to now feel like a single story arc) than almost everything I've seen in a movie theater this year. As I've mentioned to my friends before (and if the Google search worked on this blog, I might be able to tell whether I'd mentioned it here before :-S), most movie trailers I see in the theater make me want to never go to the theater again (presumably because the trailers feel like they're aimed at teenage idiots). For the average theatrical film, I come out wondering why we didn't stay home and watch the next episode of
Buffy / Alias / The West Wing.

I'd rate this 4/10. The problem is, I went in with expectations, since somebody from Julie's workplace had said it was particularly good, and Orson Scott Card had praised it (explaining why its box-office performance was "defying" critic's lukewarm reviews). A key quote from Card's review:

National Treasure is not only smart, but it thinks we're smart. It is made with the assumption that we can follow a storyline that actually requires us to think and remember and care about what's good and decent.

If I hadn't been prompted by this, I probably would have enjoyed the movie more; as it was, National Treasure felt to me like a Movie-of-the-Week done with an A-list cast (Nicolas Cage! John Voight!) and an infinite budget. But it's a Jerry Bruckheimer film, so it neither requires, nor rewards, any more intelligence than the average Jerry Bruckheimer film.

My very good friend David Caulton, who works for some big software company in the Pacific northwest, has been playing with a beta blog done by a subsidiary(?). Some interesting features. Check it out.

At Gregory's house I saw a sort of "Instant" Indian meal, and asked him about it. He said he'd told everybody but me, because he knew I hate Indian food (an utter lie—I'm just burned out on South Indian food). Basically, there's a grocery near (the IU) campus that has a lot of these Indian meals; I asked my wife Julie to pick some up on her trip home from work.

The meals are (I think) by a company called MTR. (I say "I think" because the packaging makes it hard to tell—shouldn't there be some marketing rule about making your company name a clear part of your package? ;-). Ah—there's an email address: feedback@mtrwonderkitchen.com . Visiting that domain in my browser turns up "Welcome to MTR FOODS LIMITED" and "This website under construction. Please visit us later!" The company name is in a <blink> tag (or equivalent). Are these people trying not to get my business? ;-)

The food is inexpensive and precooked and doesn't need refrigeration. You can heat it by putting the foil pouch in boiling water for 5 minutes, or by pouring the contents of the pouch into a microwavable bowl and cooking on High for 2 minutes. I did the latter.

The first dish I tried, Paneer Butter Masala, is really very good. I'd rate it 4 out of 5. It's not as good as the food at the excellent (north) Indian restaurants in Indianapolis, but it's not 60 miles / 100km / 1 hour's drive away, either. And it's quite inexpensive as well.

Since I use this blog for keeping notes of things I want to remember, I think I'll just keep a list of the dishes I try and what I think of them. So, to start out:

Chana Masala ("Wholesome chick peas cooked in a tangy, piquant sauce") 4/5
Paneer Butter Masala ("Mild spiced gravy with cottage cheese") 4.1/5
Rajma Masala ("Red Kidney beans in spiced gravy") 3.9/5 (reminds me a bit too much of Tex-Mex chili without meat).