Slumdog Millionaire

I saw above film in London in January and have been wanting to write a word or two about it ever since.
It was advertised as "the feel-good movie of the year" but by the time I left the cinema I felt as though I had seen "the feel-bad movie of the year"!
Contrary to many viewers and critics I really disliked this film.
Since when is poverty amusing entertainment?
Since when is violence fun to watch?
Okay I must confess at this point that I was the small girl who when watching Charlie Chaplin cried inconsolably and felt horribly sorry for CC. I preferred Buster Keaton.
I was also the small girl who had night-mares for years after I had seen Guernica and a bullfight in Barcelona was my idea of sheer and utter horror. I had night-mares for so long after and day-mares.
Take the film Slumdog Millionaire by Danny Boyle, so the story is pretty straightforward and predictable. The style of telling his life story through the questions he is asked is fine, a common device going from the end through the past and ending up at the end again. Still the questions as chapters was a nice touch. The actor was very very good I agree.
BUT the film was filled with gratuitous violence, doses of romance, humour at the expense of the less fortunate, adrenalin rushes, suspense...is that what makes a great film? It is formula and it is boring and manipulative and condescending.
My greatest criticism is that despite a fairly simple story and a cast of characters they managed to turn out two-dimensional; cardboard cut-outs racing around Bombay.
Film is an amazing medium and when used well it can open doors and windows and it can change how we experience life, it can make us think and question and feel.
I look forward to sharing those films with you!

Northumberland Cumbria and Border Creatives

Today I decided to start a group on facebook which I hope will become real as well as virtual. What does that even mean?!
I feel isolated out here in the rural area I live and work in. So I thought perhaps a way of connecting over rivers and valleys and dales and lakes and ruins would be a "virtrural community" of like-minded people would help that state of being.
Now that spring is around the corner and the days are longer I feel like getting out and about more too. I would love to meet the other creatives who populate these northerns counties.
Do go to the site above Northumberland Cumbria and Border Creatives in facebook and join and we can hopefully connect and share our work.

Images and other weaknesses

By now you would have noticed that I must be a visual person. I pour over images and I am absolutely enamoured by looking and seeing.
Colour, form, content, juxtaposition...
I can look for ages.
Once many years ago, in London I think it was, I was at a friends house for a dinner party. Someone present had just put out a book with photos from Christiania, the free town in Copenhagen. Well I did not get beyond the very first page because it was an overview of the area from above and it was detailed and beautiful. For the first time I saw what it actually looked like as a place not just as an experience when visiting. Others at the dinner got very impatient with me after I had stared at this page for ages. Embarrassing for me and hard to explain my deep fascination.
As a child I used to look at my fathers books again for ages and ages never getting enough of the images. I would go INTO the picture. Start living inside it.
I did this in art museums also, my grandmother would go to the cafe and have coffee while I would sit in front of my favourite painting of the day and live in it. I was very lucky she was so understanding and patient.
Do you know what I mean?

Other faces other facets

India

Bombay Gateway to India. Well it will be my gateway.It will be my port of arrival when I finally make my trip to India. I have wanted to make this trip for years and it seems
that things are falling into place now.
There are many months until departure and time to prepare. I have several books I want to read and films to see and people to talk to.
I would be very happy and grateful if you my blogreader have any suggestions to make!
Any books or films or anything you would recommend-just go ahead please.Comments would be a good place to share them.
The book Maximum City... was a good read although limited in its subject matter. The book was divided into three sections Power, Pleasure and finally a shorter one called Passage. It felt as though the makers and writers of Slumdog Millionaire had read this book from cover to cover. Obviously being one of the largest cities in the world with a population larger than many countries, Bombay has a long and complex history past and recent. This city can not be done justice by one book and I am acutely aware of this. In fact books, films, music, poems, stories, photos, sound, smells and taste and feel can probably not do it justice!!!
So what I am saying is this my search will take me to other views and versions and yet the visit itself is not a culmination or an arrival only a visit. The most interesting point I found in Mr Mehta's writing was that of being an outsider even when "at home".I can empathize with this state very well.It is okay for a writer a creator and even helpful at times.
Travel is a way of learning but what about? Ultimately it is I who is doing the tripping and being with myself at the time all of the time. Would it not be great to be able to be a fly on the wall where they have no fly swatters!?
Island of Bombay map from 1909!