Thanksgiving of Dhoom.
Now that it's the day after Thanksgiving, and everyone's slowly awakening from their food-induced comas, I can update lj again. My family managed to forget again that leaving grocery shopping for the day of Thanksgiving itself is a very bad idea, and thus we were not able to get any tofurky. I was briefly upset, but then decided to substitute it with baked tofu stuffed with rice pilaf and gravy, courtesy of this recipe blog. I recommend that any vegans on my list check out the link--the dishes seem quite delicious, and there are lots of pictures and a great recipe index.
Thanks to my roommate, I also made some kickass stuffing, and experimented with pumpkin pie, which actually turned out pretty good (it was looking dodgy for a bit, but it pulled through).
While on the subject of Thanksgiving and veganism, I just want to say that I really hate the annual Turkey Pardon farce thing the president does. I also hate the glut of those dumb Thanksgiving commercials where animated turkeys try to escape their death verdict while we're encouraged to laugh with the confidence that they'll eventually still end up being eaten. But I might hate the ceremony more. The thing that so chafes me about it is that by carrying out this whole "pardon" mockery, the ceremony seems to briefly acknowledge the turkey as a conscious entity that has been sentenced to death, and one that wishes to escape this undeserved punishment--but only for a moment. Everyone gathers around and is all happy that this turkey gets to live, but then they go to the supermarket and calmly browse through the aisle of dead frozen birds, picking out the choicest one for their table. I think I'd rather there were no ceremony at all, because at least then there wouldn't be this disgusting smugness in the sparing of one turkey and the slaughtering of others, and the mass killing of animals wouldn't be treated as such a joke.
On to non-food activities, though. Family holidays also seem to be full of family movie outings. Yesterday, we rented and watched Thank You For Smoking, which was quite well-made and funny, though libertarian. It was obvious it was libertarian from the movie itself, and that was fine, but I just wish I didn't see the special features with the director, the author of the book, and the main character (all white men) complaining about this horrible Culture of PC we live in. It is such an imposition on them, I'm sure, that being blatantly derogatory and dismissive of people is not publicly well-received anymore.
The movie was still good, though, except for Katie Holmes.
Then today, Anna dragged us all to see DHOOM:2, which can only be written in all caps. It was pretty fantastic (dangermousie, I think you'll love it). Fast action, thieves, disguises, motorcycle chases, daring escapes, ridiculous over-the-top-action and a lotta skin. It was all fairly self-consciously funny, too, and made allusions to most of the big Hollywood heist and spy movies. And of course it had that Bollywood exuberance which so few Western movies have, where you can tell that everyone's just having such fun with it. Plus I love the unapologetic "cool" action scenes: the movie starts out with our hero parachuting onto a train in the desert from the sky, blocking bullets with a bungee-attached folding board he carries, and then unfolding this makeshift shield into a surfboard, and snow-boarding on the desert sand. Even better, in a much later scene, he falls off a cliff and then somehow somersaults back up again. How? Who cares? the director seems to say. It's Hrithik! He can do anything!
(I especially like the part of the exposition where the detective who's after him starts going on about how he's "the perfect thief" and how "he's smart and he's cool," and then actually gives reasons as to why he's "cool.")
This was also an extremely Western movie, probably meant for the international market--everyone wore exclusively Western clothes, and half the songs weren't even in Hindi. The dance moves were also pretty hip-hop inspired, though that's becoming more common now in general. I like the Indian take on hip-hop fashion, such as glittery fishnet hoodies, but am not so fond of the booty-shake dance move as included in the choreography. It's too openly vulgar (Bollywood does coy sexuality better), and it intrudes on the equal-opportunity objectification that the dance numbers usually have. The most emblematic Western substitution though (in my opinion) was that instead of a Wet Sari Dancing Scene, there was a Wet Playing Basketball In A Miniskirt Scene. That was pretty great. The only truly disappointing thing--the whole idea of Hrithik reprising John Abraham's role from the first movie via the wonderfully over-the-top "plot device" of extreme plastic surgery and robotic torso reconstruction has been entirely dropped. Hrithik plays an entirely new character. And I had been looking foward to the Robot Master Thief Hrithik so.
As a parting gift, I leave you all this DHOOM:2 preview:
C'mon, you gotta see Hrithik dance. It's awesome. (And it's even sung in English, so you have no excuse.)
Thanks to my roommate, I also made some kickass stuffing, and experimented with pumpkin pie, which actually turned out pretty good (it was looking dodgy for a bit, but it pulled through).
While on the subject of Thanksgiving and veganism, I just want to say that I really hate the annual Turkey Pardon farce thing the president does. I also hate the glut of those dumb Thanksgiving commercials where animated turkeys try to escape their death verdict while we're encouraged to laugh with the confidence that they'll eventually still end up being eaten. But I might hate the ceremony more. The thing that so chafes me about it is that by carrying out this whole "pardon" mockery, the ceremony seems to briefly acknowledge the turkey as a conscious entity that has been sentenced to death, and one that wishes to escape this undeserved punishment--but only for a moment. Everyone gathers around and is all happy that this turkey gets to live, but then they go to the supermarket and calmly browse through the aisle of dead frozen birds, picking out the choicest one for their table. I think I'd rather there were no ceremony at all, because at least then there wouldn't be this disgusting smugness in the sparing of one turkey and the slaughtering of others, and the mass killing of animals wouldn't be treated as such a joke.
On to non-food activities, though. Family holidays also seem to be full of family movie outings. Yesterday, we rented and watched Thank You For Smoking, which was quite well-made and funny, though libertarian. It was obvious it was libertarian from the movie itself, and that was fine, but I just wish I didn't see the special features with the director, the author of the book, and the main character (all white men) complaining about this horrible Culture of PC we live in. It is such an imposition on them, I'm sure, that being blatantly derogatory and dismissive of people is not publicly well-received anymore.
The movie was still good, though, except for Katie Holmes.
Then today, Anna dragged us all to see DHOOM:2, which can only be written in all caps. It was pretty fantastic (dangermousie, I think you'll love it). Fast action, thieves, disguises, motorcycle chases, daring escapes, ridiculous over-the-top-action and a lotta skin. It was all fairly self-consciously funny, too, and made allusions to most of the big Hollywood heist and spy movies. And of course it had that Bollywood exuberance which so few Western movies have, where you can tell that everyone's just having such fun with it. Plus I love the unapologetic "cool" action scenes: the movie starts out with our hero parachuting onto a train in the desert from the sky, blocking bullets with a bungee-attached folding board he carries, and then unfolding this makeshift shield into a surfboard, and snow-boarding on the desert sand. Even better, in a much later scene, he falls off a cliff and then somehow somersaults back up again. How? Who cares? the director seems to say. It's Hrithik! He can do anything!
(I especially like the part of the exposition where the detective who's after him starts going on about how he's "the perfect thief" and how "he's smart and he's cool," and then actually gives reasons as to why he's "cool.")
This was also an extremely Western movie, probably meant for the international market--everyone wore exclusively Western clothes, and half the songs weren't even in Hindi. The dance moves were also pretty hip-hop inspired, though that's becoming more common now in general. I like the Indian take on hip-hop fashion, such as glittery fishnet hoodies, but am not so fond of the booty-shake dance move as included in the choreography. It's too openly vulgar (Bollywood does coy sexuality better), and it intrudes on the equal-opportunity objectification that the dance numbers usually have. The most emblematic Western substitution though (in my opinion) was that instead of a Wet Sari Dancing Scene, there was a Wet Playing Basketball In A Miniskirt Scene. That was pretty great. The only truly disappointing thing--the whole idea of Hrithik reprising John Abraham's role from the first movie via the wonderfully over-the-top "plot device" of extreme plastic surgery and robotic torso reconstruction has been entirely dropped. Hrithik plays an entirely new character. And I had been looking foward to the Robot Master Thief Hrithik so.
As a parting gift, I leave you all this DHOOM:2 preview:
C'mon, you gotta see Hrithik dance. It's awesome. (And it's even sung in English, so you have no excuse.)