The Sane Lunatic

25 years. To the aged and more experienced, that's not too significant a landmark but when that's the maximum number of years you've been alive, it feels like a big deal. Once you're 25, you're officially "old", especially in the 21st century. Here's a short version of how it has been for me... Turning 25 feels kinda sucky to be honest. I've often felt like an old person in terms of my thought process but now I feel like my body is catching up to it. At this point, the worries about the future start hitting you way harder than at 24, for no logical reason. It's like going from young interesting prospect to being expectedly stupid and boring. At 25 in India, if you're not pursuing an MBA, a masters degree, a start-up idea, a big salary hike or a marriage prospect, people find it hard to understand you. But if you're a male, nobody really cares. Because at 25, to the society, you become perfectly average. While that's not a dama...

Is this even necessary? Is there anybody here who hasn't yet seen the final instalment of Avengers? Or needs to read a review to decide whether they should watch it? If yes, then this is for you. This is the last one. The closer. The end of an era. Maybe not the end of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the end of the Avengers as we've come to know them. 11 years and 21 movies later, Avengers: Endgame picks up where Avengers: Infinity War left off. Earth lost to Thanos. The damn universe lost to Thanos. Half of all living things were erased and we were left with a handful of surviving heroes on the green planet - 'Captain America' Steve Rogers, 'Black Widow' Natasha Romanoff, Thor, Hulk, 'War Machine' Rhodey, Rocket Racoon and as it happens 'Iron Man' Tony Stark himself. A few weeks after the snap, a half-dead Tony and now ally Nebula are brought back to Earth by newcomer Captain Marvel. The team was still trying to hunt down Thanos and a...

Oh..my...Gosh. Emmet is back! If you don't know who the hell is Emmet then you need to log on to some online streaming service- Netflix, Amazon Prime or YouTube or whatever to watch 'The Lego Movie' which came out in 2014 and was a block-buster success *wink wink*. This, in case you didn't figure it out, is the sequel. And it's pretty awesome. The storyline builds from where the first movie ended and as it references to the real-world kids who build with Lego to make the story, the theme moves along with their age. The main master-builder human is now in his early teens and going through his brooding phase while his little sister has now grown up a bit too. As any sibling would tell me or you, there are always fights for the toys. Emmet (Chris Pratt) and the gang now live in a Mad Max inspired Apocalypseburg where everything is not awesome and everyone is thinking of how tough and bleak life is with the main crew adopting the theme too. Except for him. He...

Another Spider-Man movie? Did they change the lead actor again? Nope. This a totally different kind of Spider-Man movie and it's as true to a comic art as it can get. It's animated, but the art-style is old-school like the comics are and the storyline? Well, it's probably the best one yet. This time, the central character isn't your friendly neighbourhood Peter Parker, it's young teen Miles Morales. Yes, he is an African-American character who lives in the not-so-nice part of New York and while not poor, he isn't living a life of comfort either. So when he happens to be a smart kid and gets a scholarship to get into a high-society school for prodigious minds, his parents are very much on board with this opportunity. But Miles is not. He's smart but he doesn't want to be part of the snobs. And he wants to work on what really makes him happy: art. Also, his dad is a police officer and his uncle is a cool-but-shady guy who believes in his art. But t...

Hi! It's been a while since the last post because I haven't been out to see a movie which is mainly because of how busy I am nowadays. But I couldn't pass on the opportunity to do a short year-end post as we head into 2019. I'm going to focus on the last four months in particular because they have been quite the turnaround in my fortunes in so many different ways. Starting off with September which kicked off with a round of interviews for a new job, the kind of job I had been looking for throughout the year. Even better was finally getting the job, despite all manners of issues coming up in the last minute that could well have led to completely different outcomes. My success in getting this new job was also a big boost to my self-confidence and made me feel so, so relieved because it meant that I had not stubbornly put myself through all that pain and anxiety for nothing. Another big part of September was how hard I was working on my automotive blog, The Auto Loon...

I like watching movies and I like listening to certain kinds of songs. Sometimes I watch musicals but unlike most of Bollywood, I'm happy to enjoy the two separately most of the time. This is different though. It's a movie about songs, some of the most iconic songs of the 20th Century and the men behind them. One man in particular, who possessed prodigious talent and lived a life worth debate - Freddie Mercury from Queen. This biopic gives a brief insight into the story of Farrokh Bulsara, ie, Freddie Mercury. Born in Tanzania to a Parsi family that then fled to the suburbs of England, Freddie is brought to life by the splendid performance of Rami Malek. Following the man's passion for music, his distinguished dressing sense and how Queen came to be as a band. While some may argue that this part of the story was treated with too much brevity, I find it the perfect directorial choice to keep the film entertaining and not make it into a BBC special documentary. From ...

Oh, look. It's another superhero movie. Which one is it this time? Marvel or DC? What? What d'you mean neither? Sony? I thought they're working on Spiderman flicks with Marvel Studios only. It's not Spiderman but it's kind of related? Would you just temme already, this is quite a tiresome questioning you know? (Gets shown trailer for Venom). Ohhhhh. This should be goood (rubs hands gleefully). Venom. Possibly the most badass anti-hero character in my memory from the Spiderverse. Tom Hardy. One of the best badass actors of this generation. Add it up and what you should have is an epic comic-book live-action movie. But there's this big, big problem and it's got to do with legal ownership of characters and their fictional universes. Venom is an alien symbiote life-form with a back story rooted deep in the Spiderverse and involves Spidey himself. But with the third-gen reboot of the friendly neighbourhood Spiderman being driven by the Marvel Comic Univer...