Variety is the spice of life

 This is possibly the oldest english movie i've ever seen. Except for Shirley Mclaine, whose name i've come across in couple of novels as some reference, none of the other cast are even vaguely familiar. Billy wilder, the director, name does ring a bell, but again quite sure not because of this movies and mostly from any reference on articles or posts about some movie. How i ended up watching this movie is all thanks to an interview by a tamil director who was mentioning "It's a mad mad mad mad world" as his favorite comedy movie and luckily it was available on Prime. Even within the first few scenes it became quite familiar for the number of times the movie has been plagiarized, remade officially, scenes lifted left right and center across all possible languages. While looking at similar movies, ended up with "Apartment". Again, within first few scenes, i was drawn to it because of a favorite hindi movie of mine "Life in a metro". The director

Few days before my mom was talking to her elder sister on phone and they were reminiscing about their childhood days, like how they used to walk for several kilometers to reach their school, their lunch boxes, how risky it would be during rainy days when the river would be overflowing, how terrified she would be to cross the cemetery on the way, the different kinds of fruits that were freely available on the way that are no longer available now even in shops. She used to mention often about power cuts or lack of electricity to be precise, during night times, which used to scare the wits out of them. There were problems of robbers as well it seems, who would remove the tiles on top of their house during the night and would steal whatever was there in kitchen. The menace of monkeys who wouldn't just make a mess of the food cooked for the entire family but also would defecate there and make a mess of the whole kitchen. She would also mention about their garden at their backyard and th

 Resident alien is a new drama series launched in Netflix. It begins as yet another sci-fi series where aliens crash land on earth and except for that part, they have tried to go against every other situation that are previously seen in any series or stories involving extra terrestrials. This alien, takes the shape/structure/body of a human whom it kills by accident. The mission of that alien is to destroy all human kind on earth and when i crash landed on earth, it looses track of its ship and also the killer device. While searching for that device, it tries to adapt itself to the town where it crash landed, as the town's doctor. What follows is several quirky situations that it somehow manages to escape. Even though it has taken human form, there is a kid whose mutative power makes him see the alien in its true form. Initially, the kid and the alien are at loggerheads with the alien trying to "eliminate" the kid in several inventive ways. Eventually they form an allianc

 It has been exactly 100 days since i had that fateful discussion. Life has gone through quite a churn in past couple of months with almost every day being an emotional rollercoaster. It feels as if i have had a near death scenario or some severely strong scenario that has released all pent up thoughts that lay hidden in some remote corners of mind, waiting for their turn to occupy the thought space. Mind has been wondering and wandering a lot about "what if" scenarios a lot off late and it has been a virtual pattimandram happening inside pondering over the "if's" and "buts". On one hand it feels too arrogant to even think about long term when situations are so dynamic and become volatile at the click of a trigger. In this particular case it was more of wishing against reality, that was clearly visible from long for a while, just delaying the inevitable in mind while refusing to prepare oneself for it. On the other hand, we can't live everyday thin

 Happened to see one interview after another of Mohan (Mike Mohan of Kollywood) across several YouTube channels, who was promoting his upcoming movie, after almost 2 decades. I had never been a big fan of his movies, but they were supposedly super duper hits. I always felt he was more of a "Oliyum Oliyum" actor, who primarily scored success solely because of wonderful songs that adorned his movies and more importantly the comedy tracks that were raging success. Goundamani and Senthil combo would've played as much role in bringing repeat audiences for his movies as much as Ilayaraja and other music directors who had a soft corner for Mohan, reserving their best for him. SPB seemed to enjoy extra while singing playback for his songs and Mohan's mannerisms and actions almost mimicked the voice (be it for songs or dubbing). It was a perfect amalgamation of everything in right quantities that contributed to his movies being superhits. The best part of all of this being, in

 Its been a while since i finished reading the book but had been away from blogsphere for quite a while. Hence the delay. The previous book Echo burning was a literal disappointment and hence no review for that book. Without fail was slightly more engaging when compared to the previous one. It starts as a typical Reacher novel, now i can use this phrase i guess after 6 books into the series, with Reacher being outsourced with the task of analysing the security cover for the next potential VP of USA. His job is to figure out gaps in the setup provided by the secret service. When he digs further he realizes that there are credible threat to the VP's life per the several threat mails that appear one after another, right at the desk of the head of security. What follows next is an investigative analysis, that is as tedious as it comes, with Reacher making several lucky guesses and hitting jackpot each time. The final reveal about the perps was a terrible let down when compared to the e