Looking at Cartoons, Getting Along

Launched on Nov 29 2006, now 2,100+ posts...This bilingual blog - 'आन्याची फाटकी पासोडी' in Marathi- is largely a celebration of visual and/or comic ...तुकाराम: "ढेकणासी बाज गड,उतरचढ केवढी"...George Santayana: " Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence"...William Hazlitt: "Pictures are scattered like stray gifts through the world; and while they remain, earth has yet a little gilding."

मेघदूत: "नीचैर्गच्छत्युपरि च 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: "… इ. स. 1000 नंतर ज्या प्रकारची संस्कृती रुढ झाली , त्यामध्ये साधारणत्व व विश्वात्मकता हे गुण प्राय: लुप्त झाले...आपली संस्कृती अकाली विश्वात्मक साधारणतेला मुकली आहे."

Sunday, November 26, 2017

जी ए कुलकर्णी आणि कॅसाब्लांका....Casablanca@75

75 years ago, on November 26 1942, Casablanca was first released

Alyssa Rosenberg:

“In a world where we have more options in entertainment in general and the movies in particular, why do we continue to need Humphrey Bogart? Rick never figured out why Ilsa ended up in his bar in Casablanca. But why isn't really the important part: All that matters is that she's there.”

Roger Ebert:

”...Seeing the film over and over again, year after year, I find it never grows overfamiliar. It plays like a favorite musical album; the more I know it, the more I like it. The black-and-white cinematography has not aged as color would. The dialogue is so spare and cynical it has not grown old-fashioned. Much of the emotional effect of Casablanca is achieved by indirection. As we leave the theater, we are absolutely convinced that the only thing keeping the world from going crazy is that the problems of three little people do, after all, amount to more than a hill of beans.”

हॉली ब्रुबाक (Holly Brubach) न्यूयॉर्क टाईम्स मध्ये फेब्रुवारी ४ २०११ला लिहतात :

"... Bogart’s appeal was and remains completely adult — so adult that it’s hard to believe he was ever young. If men who take responsibility are hard to come by in films these days, it’s because they’re hard to come by, period, in an era when being a kid for life is the ultimate achievement, and “adult” as it pertains to film is just a euphemism for pornography...."

हंफ्री बोगार्ट यांचे दिसणे सुद्धा चॉकलेटचा चेहरा असलेल्या नटांहून खूप वेगळे.

जी ए कुलकर्णी यांचे वरील दोन्ही बाबतीत बोगार्ट यांच्याशी साम्य... लहानपणापासून मोठी जबाबदारी पेललेली, अनेक दुःखे झेललेली, जीवनाच्या अखेर पर्यंत अविवाहित मावसबहिणीला दिलेली साथ, आपल्यामुळे कोणाला त्रास नको म्हणून परक्या / नावडत्या गावात आयुष्याचा शेवटी केलेला मुक्काम, त्याग अंगवळणी पडलेला, प्रौढत्व केंव्हाच आलेल- इतक्या लवकरकी हिरवट तारुण्य कधी नव्हतेच ...

जी एंनी Casablanca बद्दल लिहलय का ? त्यांना तो सिनेमा नक्कीच खूप आवडला असणार.. ते सहजपणे ईलसा (Ilsa) ला म्हणू शकले असते...

"...But I've got a job to do, too. Where I'm going you can't follow. What I've got to do you can't be any part of. Ilsa, I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that. Now, now..."

अर्थात त्याला आणखी पण एक मोठे कारण आहे... त्यांच्या अतिशय आवडत्या इनग्रिड बर्गमन त्यात आहेत!