Tag Archives: movie

And So It Goes

Today is Thursday, April 10, 2025. It’s getting late here owing to Elliot and I watching several things on television after my returning from Manhattan and seeing a new gayrom called A Nice Indian Boy with my newish friend “Harry” and having lunch with him at an Italian restaurant just opposite the Quad Theatre, on West 13th Street. Originally, we were going to have lunch at a Chinese restaurant on West 14th Street, but thanks to my late decision to call them before leaving to meet Harry at around 1:45 p.m. and finding out that it had closed permanently, we had to decide on anther place very quickly. As I walked to the Quad Theatre, I discovered the restaurant called Da Andrea that looked quite nice from the outside. The film was supposed to go on at 3:15, so there really was no time to meander to look for another place to have lunch. Thus we met across the street at Da Andrea and entered the restaurant and sought a table.

For lunch, Harry and I shared an appetizer, polpettine di vitello (veal meatballs, tomato basil, and ricotta), then we ordered separate entrees: I ordered gnocchetti al pomodoro, while Harry ordered some clam dish. Everything tasted quite good, even though the prices were a little steep, but this is Manhattan. For dessert, Harry ordered gelato consisting of three flavors: chocolate, cherry, and vanilla. I actually eschewed dessert this rare time. I just had coffee throughout the meal.

After paying the bill, we just darted across the street to enter the cinema. We had a few minutes before the start of the film. Now to the film: as a reviewer stated in MetroWeekly, the film “spares no layer of sentiment.” It is the love story of two nice Indian boys, one being Naveen Gavaskar (Karan Soni), a doctor, with an overbearing mother and a quiet father, and a sarcastic, moody sister, and an American, actually, Jay Kurundkar, here played by Broadway’s Jonathan Groff, who actually was an orphan adopted by an older Indian couple. The two men meet, incidentally, in a temple while praying to the deity of Ganesh. For them, it’s love practically at first sight. The pair meet again in Naveen’s hospital, where Jay is working as a photographer who is tasked with taking pictures of the staff. Here they make a more serious connection and agree to go on a first date.

All throughout the film, it’s Naveen who is guarded and a little withdrawn in front of his traditional parents, Megha (stand-up comedian Zarna Garg) and Archit (Harish Patel), and his sullen older sister, Arundhathi (Sunita Mani), who was married in a gaudy Indian wedding six years prior to the events of Naveen and Jay’s budding romance.

The only true conflict in the film revolves around Naveen’s bringing home his boyfriend to meet his parents, even though they both know that their only son is gay. The progressive couple are so tolerant of their son’s gay identity that they are seen watching OUTtv to broaden their understanding of queer life. It is Naveen’s mother who draws the most laughs as she tells him in one scene about the movie Milk that she’s watched with her husband.

It is Naveen’s father, Archit, who is a little more stolid and quiet on his gay son’s life since he’s hidden his gayness from him in a consistent manner. The Gavaskars have never seen their son be gay around a partner, as Jay is the first boyfriend he brings home to them.

Overall, I thought the film lacked more depth and texture. There is no description of Naveen’s life as a doctor; we just see him in the hospital jabbering away with his Asian doctor friend over other dates and there’s no specifics on where the film is set. At the end, after scanning the credits, we discover it was shot in Canada – where else? Also, the film lacked true chemistry between the two principals, with not one scene of bare flesh in the whole film. Not that we needed to see the two having sweaty sex, but it might have helped. The film seems to have been marketed to a straight audience who would have winced if more skin was shown at all during its very short length.

Anyway, the film is inoffensive and sweet and it does end with a wedding. It is directed by Roshan Sethi and is based on a play (which I’ve never heard of) by Madhuri Shekar and a screenplay by Shekar and Eric Randall.

Today the Supreme Court delivered a blow to the Dump administration in their ruling requiring that his administration must “facilitate” the return of a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, but stopped short of requiring the government to return him to the United States.

Here the high court said that the administration must try to – not “must” – return Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Salvadorian national who was deported on March 15.

The administration incorrectly asserted that Abrego Garcia was a “ranking member” of the MS-13 gang, but no evidence was provided by Big Brother in this case. His lawyers have continuously stressed that heir client has no criminal background in Maryland, or anywhere else. They have also denied his involvement in MS-13.

So who knows what has happened to this poor man since he was deported. His case just illustrates how lawless the Dump administration is and how no one – I mean, no one – is safe from being whisked out of this country in the present time. Think of that one, folks!

By the way, it’s only Day 81 in the Chump administration, which seems more like way, way longer like 2 years, really.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is January 26, 2025. Today Elliot and I took out items from our 14-year-old car that we are giving to Elliot’s daughter, “Emily,” and her husband “Allan” on Wednesday, January 29. In fact, we’re going to effect the transfer of the title and car to Emily actually on Thursday, January 30. We’ll spend Wednesday driving down to Wilmington, Delaware, where we will break up the 5-hour drive by spending one night at the Residence Inn in Downton Wilmington. Then we will take the car to Emily and her husband on Thursday, whereupon we’ll spend one night in Silver Spring before taking the train back to New York on Friday. This will be our last road trip with the Nissan Altima. And when I left the car on the street later in the afternoon after transferring items to the new car, our Subaru Forester Sport, I looked longingly at the car, feeling the moment of letting go of the automobile in just a few days.

Other than having breakfast out with Elliot at Jackson Hole, today was very sedate, compared to my long day out with my friend “Seth” yesterday.

Also today I received my first critical text for launching my political group that is supposed to be meeting tomorrow in the afternoon. The only good thing about it was that it wasn’t nasty and it didn’t contain vulgarities like so many posts seem to have on social media platforms. The user just wrote this: “You got to be kidding! Trump the best man for the job! He defends my democracy clearly. Grin and bear it.” I had no intention of engaging with this person, so I did not answer her.

As of yesterday, I had 14 members. However, only one other person is supposedly attending the meeting tomorrow. I did call the restaurant just to give a heads-up about the potential conclave, but who knows, it might suffer the same fate as last week’s nonmeeting. Only time will tell. I also received one other critical text from someone who found the time, 1:30, not conducive for working people and suggested it was not a good time to convene this type of organization. I never thought of that when I scheduled the meeting for a Monday afternoon. Maybe I just figured that anyone interested in the group would be retired and have the time to attend a meeting during the afternoon. Now I might have to reconsider when to have these meetings. Would I need to move up the beginning time of the gatherings to early or late evening or even have them over the weekend instead? It will be certainly interesting.

When we take the car down to Wilmington on Wednesday, it will mark the end of shifting the car back and forth on Thursdays and Fridays. I will not miss those days at all. It will be easier then to have just the one car, and we will cancel the insurance on the Nissan on the last day of January.

The recent stupid decision by Chump to pardon ALL of the January 6 defendants has received intense backlash from many corners, including from – gasp! – some Republicans even, and one former MSNBC commentator had these words for Democrats in an online article for AlterNet entitled “Mehdi Hasan suggests Dems ‘shut down as a political party’ if they don’t ‘run on’ this Trump move” by Maya Boddie. The decision to do this was met with criticism even from former Senate Minority Leader “Bitch” McConnell (R-KY). Finally finding his voice, McConnell said, “No one should excuse violence. And particularly violence against police officers.”

On Saturday night, the jerk known as Donald Chump bragged about the pardons to a Las Vegas crowd of MAGA supporters, but now, Democrats are being urged to rally against the president’s move.

Ex-MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan has urged Democrats to take advantage of the outrageous action carried out by Dump, which former U.S. District Judge Shira Sheindlin called “legally authorized but constitutionally unpardonable.”

Hasan indicated, “If Democrats can’t run on this, can’t use this to their advantage, then they should shut down as a political party and give up doing politics.” Hasan wrote this on X.

Well, that’s it for now. We tried to watch one of the nominated movies for Best Picture of 2024 which is on Netflix: Emilia Perez that stars Zoe Saldana, Selena Gomez, and trans actor Karla Sofia Gascon who plays a Mexican cartel leader who enlists the aid of a lawyer (Saldana) to help her transition into a woman. Gascon is the first openly trans woman to be nominated for Best Actress in this film that has garnered 13 nominations. What is strange about the film is that it’s a musical, with most of the numbers sung in Spanish. We managed only to watch a little over an hour of the film, which is over 2 hours. So far, it’s received tremendous backlash from the trans community and from other quarters. I heard two online video reviews of it in which both critics gave it a stunning thumbs-down. How could the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences be so wrong in determining the quality of its films? Of course, the film which is directed by a Frenchman, Jacques Audiard, hits all of the correct culture war buttons: emphasis on LGBTQ+ rights, particularly transgender issues (which this new administration is hellbent on unrecognizing), focus on Latin America and its social ills, the drug cartels, and its many hapless victims. Anyway, we will have to decide to continue watching the film, despite how we feel about it.

Have a good week.

And so it went!