मेघदूत: "नीचैर्गच्छत्युपरि दशा चक्रनेमिक्रमेण"

समर्थ शिष्या अक्का : "स्वामीच्या कृपाप्रसादे हे सर्व नश्वर आहे असे समजले. पण या नश्वरात तमाशा बहुत आहे."

G C Lichtenberg: “It is as if our languages were confounded: when we want a thought, they bring us a word; when we ask for a word, they give us a dash; and when we expect a dash, there comes a piece of bawdy.”

C. P. Cavafy: "I’d rather look at things than speak about them."

Martin Amis: “Gogol is funny, Tolstoy in his merciless clarity is funny, and Dostoyevsky, funnily enough, is very funny indeed; moreover, the final generation of Russian literature, before it was destroyed by Lenin and Stalin, remained emphatically comic — Bunin, Bely, Bulgakov, Zamyatin. The novel is comic because life is comic (until the inevitable tragedy of the fifth act);...”

सदानंद रेगे: "... पण तुकारामाची गाथा ज्या धुंदीनं आजपर्यंत वाचली जात होती ती धुंदी माझ्याकडे नाहीय. ती मला येऊच शकत नाही याचं कारण स्वभावतःच मी नास्तिक आहे."

".. त्यामुळं आपण त्या दारिद्र्याच्या अनुभवापलीकडे जाऊच शकत नाही. तुम्ही जर अलीकडची सगळी पुस्तके पाहिलीत...तर त्यांच्यामध्ये त्याच्याखेरीज दुसरं काही नाहीच आहे. म्हणजे माणसांच्या नात्यानात्यांतील जी सूक्ष्मता आहे ती क्वचित चितारलेली तुम्हाला दिसेल. कारण हा जो अनुभव आहे... आपले जे अनुभव आहेत ते ढोबळ प्रकारचे आहेत....."

Kenneth Goldsmith: "In 1969 the conceptual artist Douglas Huebler wrote, “The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.”1 I’ve come to embrace Huebler’s ideas, though it might be retooled as “The world is full of texts, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.” It seems an appropriate response to a new condition in writing today: faced with an unprecedented amount of available text, the problem is not needing to write more of it; instead, we must learn to negotiate the vast quantity that exists. How I make my way through this thicket of information—how I manage it, how I parse it, how I organize and distribute it—is what distinguishes my writing from yours."

Tom Wolfe: "The first line of the doctors’ Hippocratic oath is ‘First, do no harm.’ And I think for the writers it would be: ‘First, entertain.’"

विलास सारंग: "… . . 1000 नंतर ज्या प्रकारची संस्कृती रुढ झाली , त्यामध्ये साधारणत्व विश्वात्मकता हे गुण प्राय: लुप्त झाले...आपली संस्कृती अकाली विश्वात्मक साधारणतेला मुकली आहे."

Tuesday, April 09, 2013

Roger Ebert: Cartoon Caption Contest Will Miss You More than Films!

I have read a few film reviews of Mr. Ebert. In recent years, I have used them to decide whether to watch a film or not. (By the way- I was mildly surprised to see some Marathi newspapers reporting passing of Mr. Ebert. I wonder if any of them has ever printed a translation of his review.)

Mostly,  I have benefited from his advice.

I like what Maureen Dowd wrote about him  in The New York Times in September 2011:

"...Ebert likes movies about Good People who do the right thing, like “Casablanca”; Bad People who do the right thing, like “The Silence of the Lambs”; and Bad People who have a sense of humor, like “Goodfellas.”

He asserts that “modern actors are handicapped by the fact that their films are shot in color” rather than the more mysterious black and white. “Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet are, and will remain, more memorable than most of today’s superstars with their multimillion-dollar paychecks,” he writes.

He complains that his life “has been devoted in such large part to films of -worthlessness.”
Hollywood dialogue was once witty, intelligent, ironic, poetic, musical,” he says. “Today it is flat.” He mourns that “it sometimes seems as if the movies are more mediocre than ever, more craven and cowardly, more skillfully manufactured to pander to the lowest tastes instead of educating them.”..."

(From the list of movies above, I love Casablanca, I like Goodfellas and I don't like The Silence of the Lambs.)

..."it sometimes seems as if the movies are more mediocre than ever, more craven and cowardly, more skillfully manufactured to pander to the lowest tastes instead of educating them" is more true of Hindi films than Hollywood ones.

(Marathi films are slightly different. Ideas behind some of them are good but the final product that comes out on the screen- cinema-  is mediocre.  Marathi news TV, newspapers and people involved with the film try talking it up but it does not work for me. You don't laugh while promoting a comedy. No sermonising on your own love, happy marriage will help. It has to come from within of the watcher while watching your film.)

But I like another side of  the late Mr. Ebert more: a New Yorker  cartoon caption contestant. He won the contest after failing at 107 of them earlier.

Bob Mankoff has written about this on his blog in April 2011 and now after Mr. Ebert's death.

Following is one of Mr. Ebert's failed attempt and, it was a failure only because of the 'Caption Contest Board of Censors' at the New Yorker. 

(I wonder why it was not sent to Playboy. Playboy has published some great cartoons. Marathi Diwali magazine Awaaz would have probably published it.)

This picture lifted my spirit as much as the tray on that plane! I have not traveled on a plane since I saw this. If and when I do, I will remember this.


Drawing Artist: Leo Cullum (1942-2010), Caption Artist: Roger Ebert (1942-2013)

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