Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash

December 2, 2020 Leave a comment

Garbology: Our dirty love affair with trash

by Edward Humes | 325 Pages | Genre: Non-Fiction | Publisher: Avery | Year: 2013 | My Rating: 9/10

“The American Dream is inextricably linked to an endless, accelerating accumulation of trash.”
― Edward Humes, Garbology

I discovered this brilliant book by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Edward Humes, when I was searching for books on plastic waste management after attending the screening of a thought-provoking documentary, A Plastic Ocean, by an award-winning filmmaker and journalist, Craig Leeson.

While the book examines how the USA became addicted to garbage, it is a story all around the world with similar environmental and socioeconomic dilemmas of the modern world. The book makes one think that while recycling the waste is the need of the hour, it is the continuous creation of waste in an endless loop that needs to be addressed. The book brings forth examples of activists and outstanding entrepreneurs who are trying to solve the menace of waste. The book also presents an economic history of garbage in the US along with surprising and even shocking statistics and concludes with a compilation of practical steps that individuals can take to reduce the environmental impacts of their generated waste. However, much more is required than just individual practices to overcome plasticisation. Planet and People need to take precedence over profits and combined efforts by communities and businesses alike along with political will are required to win the war on waste. 

I loved the chapter, ‘Down to the sea in chips’ on marine plastics pollution, and their impacts, which is a global environmental concern, converting our once pristine oceans into plastic soup.

This book is a must-read for all, especially if you are a consumer of modern life.

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Men in Black 3

May 3, 2013 Leave a comment

mibGenre: Sci-fi| Year: 2012 | Duration: 103 mins | Director: Barry Sonnenfeld | Medium: Theater (DT Cinemas, Saket) | Trailer: HERE | My rating: 4*/5*

Favorite Dialogue: Agent K: Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to”

MIB3 is the sequel to the 2002 film MIB2 starring Tommy Lee Jones as Agent K, and Will Smith as Agent J. Even though its not the best of the three MIBs, its still much better than its predecessor, MIB2, though the gap of ten years between them was equivalent to getting ‘neuralyzed’ had it not been for numerous movie channels on the telly showing repeats of the movies in last ten years. The movie revolves around the escape of a violent alien fugitive, Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement), who lost his arm in a tangle with Agent K back in 1969. When Boris arrives back on Earth after escaping from special prison on the moon, after 40 years, the Boglodite time travels to 1969 to kill-off K prior to their fateful standoff. When Agent J shows-up at MIB headquarters (with a temporal fracture and a craving for chocolate milk, as discovered by Agent O) and discovers that his partner actually died decades before they ever met, he follows Boris’ trail back to the 1969, a day in advance of the standoff in an effort to not only save K and implement a protective earth cover ArcNet, but prevent a full-on Boglodite invasion that the Men in Black had, in the prior version of reality, managed to thwart.

The Agents meet the alien Griffin (Michael Stuhlbarg), an Arcadian who possesses the ArcNet and is able to see multi-dimensionally in to all possible futures, gives them the ArcNet and instructs them to place it onto the Apollo 11 lunar rocket launch occurring in less than six hours. Boris then snatches Griffin, but the agents, on monocycles (another cool feature of the movie), give chase and recover Griffin. In the end, J & K (Young agent K is played by Josh Brolin) manages to kill both the younger and older versions of Boris, and deploys ArcNet.

This comic sci-fi with funny looking aliens is my Movie of the Day

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Larry Crowne

April 29, 2013 1 Comment

larryGenre: Romance/Comedy| Year: 2011 | Duration: 98 mins | Director: Tom Hanks | Medium: VCD (BIG Home Video) | Trailer: HERE | My rating: 2.5*/5*

Favorite Dialogue: Mercedes: (mixing a strong frozen drink) “Mmmmm…brain freeze!”

Larry Crowne (Tom Hanks), a divorced middle-aged man and navy’s veteran cook, gets fired from his floor keeper job at a store because he lacked a college level education. Upon encouragement from his neighbor, Lamar, he enrolls at a local community college to pursue better opportunities in future, studying economics and communication. Larry befriends a bunch of young, scooter-riding young people, and strikes a special friendship with a free spirited girl Talia.  The saving grace of the movie is the subtle romance between Larry and ever-radiant Julia Roberts as Mercedes Tainot, the public-speaking professor with an alcohol addiction and a disintegrating marriage.

This tepid rom-com, which is neither full of romance nor comic is my Movie of the Day.

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THE ASSASINATION OF JESSE JAMES

April 27, 2013 2 Comments

jesseGenre: Western| Year: 2007 | Duration: 160 mins | Director: Andrew Dominik | Medium: VCD (BIG Home Video) | Trailer: HERE | My rating:4.5*/5*

Fav Dialogue: Jesse James: [last words] “Don’t that picture look dusty?”

Jesse James was an outlaw in 19th-century Missouri, USA, remembered in legend as the Robin Hood of the wild west. He was murdered in 1882 by Robert Ford, a member of his own gang, for a $10,000 reward. The story revolves around Jesse james (Brad Pitt) and Bob Ford (Casey Affleck), an insecure, unpopular man who has grown up idolizing and obsessing James. Bob joins James gang during a train robbery to prove his worthiness to Jesse.  The obsession is so intense that Bob wants to murder Jesse and take his place finally as he believes that he is better than his ideal. Towards the end of the movie Bob shoots Jesse in the back of his head while he was dusting a painting of a horse.

After the assasination the Ford brothers become celebrities, but Charley is guilt-stricken and eventually commits suicide in 1884.  Bob too suffer from the pangs of guilt and is considered a traitor in public opinion and eventually is murdered by Edward O’Kelley, who later got pardoned for avenging the death of Jesse James. The style of the movie is solemn and remote and hictorically as accurate as all available sources on Jesse James.

This superbly researched and brilliantly cinematographed psychoanalytical historical epic is my ‘Movie of the day’.

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Kabul Disco

April 25, 2013 Leave a comment

kabul-discoKabul Disco

by Nicolas Wild | 148 Pages | Genre: Graphic Novel | Publisher: HarperCollins India | Year: 2009 | My Rating: 8/10

“What do I draw?” he asks.

“Make it symbolic by representing the ethnic balance: 45% are Pushtuns, 36% are Tajiks, 12% are Uzbeks, 14% are Hazaras, And then there are a few Nuristanis, of course. Draw some wearing shalwar kamiz with turbans, patoos or pakols. Then others wearing three piece suits. Out of the 300 members, 25% are women.”

“Of course,” he says. Only: “I just wanted to know, what do Pushtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras, Nuristanisshalwar kamiz, patoos, pakols and women look like?”

– Nicolas Wild, Kabul Disco

Nicolas Wild has written a marvelous satire on the big global business that is Afghanistan and its reconstruction post American bombing of the Country to get rid of Taliban and Osama. This novel thus is an entertaining account of the French graphic artist’s life in the Afghanistan working with a development agency, of international NGOs, coalition forces, nascent democracy and the not-so-diminished Taliban. At times hilariously ridiculous, and at others poignant in its observation of the prevalent times, the book brings to life the contrasting mindsets of the two cultures. Wild captures the pretentious, privileged, vaguely Eurotrash existence of the professional expat do-gooder with a suitably wicked eye. He has hilariously portrayed the protected lifestyles, the local “utility men”, the SUVs, the suspiciously connected American and, of course, the expat party scene. Skillfully he has kept the political references limited to comments on the Bush administration, and sexual tension is kept to a minimum.

This ironical and hilarious graphic novel is my Read of the Week.

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