Watching foreign films...

I remember going to school when I was quite young and there was this kid who used to carry a blade with him always and insisted on sharpening his pencils with this blade. Not because it was macho or something, he was too young for that. He just never liked a pencil sharpened by a sharpener. The other kids used to mock him quite a lot for this. It was slow, clumsy and sometimes when the wood was too hard, it was difficult to scalp. Sometimes when the paint was rough the blade used to slip and it gave a cut on the finger. The index finger of his left hand had numerous cuts; it never healed because of the continuous cuts that it received. If the tip broke down in the middle of the dictation, he must have a spare pencil otherwise it'd take quite some time to catch up.

But despite all these things he insisted on using a razor. He had a broken shaving blade (Wilkinson, I think.) and he always kept it close by. I was fascinated by this. I once borrowed his pencil and wrote and the writing felt really smooth and beautiful. Even as a 5 year old, you can discern what feels good and what doesn't. A sharpener gave a conically sharp tip that, when sharpened too much for clarity, broke into powder and grew progressively blunt and you needed to sharpen it again and again. You needed to sharpen it frequently. Whereas the blade tip stayed sharp because you made it so. Neither too sharp, nor rounded, and went on beautifully.

I learned a lot of things, apart from the fact that blade cuts. I learned to seek out soft wood pencils, to shape it so that the tip lasts a couple of pages (or more?), l learned that what might come across as a weird hobby might conceal a depth of knowledge. I've been lenient with weirdos ever since. 

So, one fine day, I was harping on the fact that WL has got a 400 kbps connection and we have no horror movies to watch. WL said there aren't any good new movies but how would it matter to me? I banged his head on and on and made him feel miserable. So, he finally came up with a movie and when we finally sat down for the show on Friday night, he told us that the movie has a rating of 90 something on rottentomatoes. We were impressed. But there was a little glitch. The movie was Swedish! WTF!!! He said he had the subtitles so no problem. ST looked at him like he was some rare form of species (which he is, but most of the time marauds as a human being!). We had nothing more to watch so after half an hour of banter we settled down for the movie. 

This movie was - "Let the right one in". I'll write a review of this too (maybe this weekend). It's a romantic movie and I usually stay away from these like they're some sort of disease (which, they are!! [Mental note: Write on harmful effects of romantic movies]). Yeah, so it's actually a romantic horror movie and we were absolutely dumbstuck while watching it. It's one of the most beautiful movies I've seen in a long long time. It's tells the story on so many levels that you just marvel at the experience. We're discussing the movie even after it finished. 

WL and ST went cold on foreign films but my appetite got stronger by every passing day. I watch "The Twilight Samurai (Japanese)", "Waltz with Bashir (Animation/Iraq?)", "Persepolis(Animation/Iran)" and just watched "The Devil's Backbone(Spanish)". I'll be writing a few reviews, when I've nothing else to write about. Maybe, I might be able to open some new vistas for you, as my friends did for me.