What is it about this movie ‘Birdman’ that has created such a buzz, propelling it all the way to the best picture and best director Oscar winner?  I’ll have to find out by watching it.  I’m so happy for Eddie Redmayne; the guy did a stupendous job enacting such a severely disabled character of Stephen Hawking.  Whatever people might think a best actor Oscar trophy really validates your identity as an actor and a performer.  You leave a legacy behind you.  You don’t have to look any further than Tom Cruise; he’s been one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood for many years and yet the biggest hole in his career has been the conspicuous absence of this golden statue.

   By the same token, Julianne Moore, after doing years of good work gets her due reward by getting the best actress award for playing an academic professor, who struggles to cope with the onset of Alzheimer in the movie ‘Still Alice’.  Even though I would have loved to see ‘Boyhood’ win some of the awards, because this movie is close to my heart.  But never mind there were so many good selections to choose from that somebody had to miss out.

   On a different note, how wonderfully they present the show.  Everything works with clockwork precision and the warmth and camaraderie seems genuine.  This is one occasion when the actors aren’t actually acting.  I was desperately hoping that Kiera Knightly or Jennifer Lopez would come on the stage so that I could have had a better look at them in all their glory!  But I did get to see Jennifer Aniston and boy didn’t she look stunning!  And Meryl Streep’s tribute to those who passed on during the course of the year was truly moving.  And last but by no means least, Lady Gaga can sing!

‘THE UNQUIET ONES A History of Pakistan Cricket’ has to be of the finest books on cricket to have come out in recent times.  And let me also say that the author Osman Samiuddin is without doubt the best cricket writer in south Asia especially when it comes to Pakistan cricket.  As the subtitle suggests, the book is primarily a chronological history of the evolution Pakistan cricket, but in broad terms you could also take it as a pithy and humorous observation on the state of Pakistani society and its rulers.  Although the author is a proud Pakistani, he doesn’t wear his patriotism on his sleeve and hence not blind to its faults.  What is quite remarkable is that how cricket and state of the nation have generally mirrored and reflected each other’s chaos and disorder.  But because of what the author describes as the innate ‘’jazba’’ or passion of its players and some brilliant administrators that Pakistan has enjoyed quite a lot of success and yet because the overall structure is inherently fragile and dependent on the whims and fancies of individuals, the descent into hell has been also spectacular.  This book is a true labor of love.  It is witty in style and ambitious in scale.

The couple of chapters devoted to unarguably the most influential cricketers that Pakistan has produced namely Imran Khan and Javed Miandad make for a riveting reading.  Their respective characters have been deconstructed like an accomplished psychoanalyst.  For someone like me who’s always had this curious fascination with Pakistan, our neighbor with whom we have shared a love-hate relationship for nearly 70 years, this was a kind of book I’d been looking for quite a while now.

I asked my Oscar trivia question to five people.  Shipra got it right while Kat, D and Mike came up with the wrong answer.  Sylvie had no idea and when I told her it was Daniel Day Lewis, she said the man creeps her out.  I was taken aback somewhat.  I mean why would such a seriously fine actor like him would creep you out?  But anyway, to each his own.  Kat said Jack Nicholson which is par for the course.  What was most interesting was Mike and D’s answer.  They said Marlon Brando.  A perfectly reasonable answer given that he has been one of the legends of Hollywood in fact film scholars and historians talk about the craft of acting in two parts namely before Brando and after Brando because he was the watershed as far as the method of acting is concerned.  Because until he arrived on the scene, acting was done mainly in a theatrical fashion which was far from natural.  But his approach to acting really changed the way subsequent generations of actors faced the camera.  Marlon Brando introduced what is now known as method acting where there is plenty of realism in the way you enact the character.  They call it “getting under the skin of the character”.  So it is but natural to assume that if anybody would have got three Academy award for best acting in a leading role, it would be him.  And yet that’s not the case.  Brando got two Oscars in his glittering career.  First time he won the trophy in 1955 in Elea Kazan’s ON THE WATERFRONT and the second time he was given the award was in 1973 for playing the role of Don Vito Corleone in THE GODFATHER. 

When he was called upon the stage in 1973 to receive  the award, something almost surreal happened when I think about it.  Not only he refused to accept the award which  so many actors crave all there lives but he also launched into a full blown tirade against the American corporate and military-industrial complex in general and the brutal and exploitative treatment of the native red Indians by the state in particular.  Things got so heated that he had to be ordered off the stage by that poster boy of right wing America John Wayne who was obviously outraged.  By that time Brando had clearly aligned himself with the liberal agenda big time.  He was a sort of pioneer in Hollywood activism the likes of which men like George Clooney and Sean Penn have carried forward.