two movies and a birthday

though it follows a group of mossad killers seeking retribution for the munich olympic village attack, munich is not about revenge. it is about people defending their home. told in a way that does not lend credence to either side, it's something like a filter that instead of separating the differences, shows the similarities in most bilateral fights going on in the world. two scenes got stuck in my head. one is when the mossad assassins are holed in a safe house waiting for their quarry to show up. fighters of the PLO who are there to meet the same guy also come to the safe house. for a brief moment there are guns pointing everywhere and after the confusion is resolved the 2 arch rivals share quarters for the night.the other scene follows immediately where the heads of the israeli fighters and the palestinian fighters talk about their struggles and we find it's all about having a place to call home.makes it quite difficult to take sides. i was immediately reminded of another movie that followed a bilateral issue. 'Roja' had an eerily similar scene where pankaj kapur in his broken tamil speaks about aazadi to arvind swamy. i liked munich for (once again) showing the human angle and for not taking sides. there are several cliches though(like an israeli and a palestinian settling for a common radio station) and one long scene towards the end where the protagonist's love making and flashbacks from the munich event intersect each other that just didnt make sense to me. it has a sort of abrupt ending and i think it was deliberately left hanging to indicate that there is no end for this conflict

the magnificent seven is about people defending their home too. a village hires a bunch of gunmen to protect them from the tyranny of a bandit. though i've seen this movie several times before, the thing i noticed anew during last night's viewing is the amazing amount of music in the movie. each scene has this score that is usually played when the camera slowly rises above a canyon's rim to show us a breathtaking view of the valley and then proceeds to focus on the lone horseman in its center. the movie isn't all guns and horses. it shows the human angle too. one of them has nightmares about his past coming back to kill him, another finds love in the village and the others after a life so close to death want to settle down and find home. all is well at the end of this movie though. the bandits are killed as are 4 of the 7.many westerns were inspired from samurai stories and it didnt surprise me at all to find out this story was lifted from a japanese film. it's still quite a fun watch but don't expect the classic western.

and my blog turns one on the 17th. i thought i'll make the anniversary post a gimmicky one. i had ideas of running a 'blast from the past' highlighting some of my posts from the archives but i'm too lazy to dig up those links. besides you are clever enough to find them yourself, right? i also thought i'd thank every one of my readers( all 5 of you :) ) and then type out a long list of my blog friends. this group is special cos i dont know any of them but i bet that if i met any of them in a chat room , i'd be able to identify them by their writing. ok that's a lie. if u want to meet any of them all you have to do is click on the links on the right. anyway thanks for hanging around. unfortunately for you i plan to keep writing. so like the old man says to the fighters who are about to ride off into the sunset:
vaya con dios
(i think it means "may god save you from this blog" though i have no idea why the old man said that)