Things

After the Plague

Devanshu Mehta — Wed, 01 Apr 2020 13:29:33 +0000

After the plague
I’ll give you a hug
If you want a hug.
But if you don’t,
That’s cool too.
We can fist bump
And then wash our hands.

After the plague,
I’ll sit next to you
At the movies.
A radical act.
We’ll share a bag of popcorn.
On second thought,
Maybe not.

After the plague,
I’ll watch your kids
Or better still
You can watch mine,
While I take a nap.

After the plague,
We’ll say “remember when”
And “I can’t believe”
But I’ll believe
And I’ll remember
This.

After the plague,
We’ll say “never again”
And hope we mean it
Because
I only have enough poetry
For one plague.

Essential

Devanshu Mehta — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 00:27:40 +0000

I am not essential,

The governor said to me

In so many words

I am thankful to you

If you are essential

But

I am not essential

And I am thankful for that

Because I am essential

At home

With my kids

Away from you

And the governor

And those of you

Who are essential

As Far Back as I Can Remember, I Always Wanted to Be Luke Skywalker

Devanshu Mehta — Sun, 19 Jan 2020 20:40:40 +0000

I wrote the 40-year story of my relationship with Star Wars.

Millennium Actress (2001)

Devanshu Mehta — Sat, 18 Jan 2020 02:12:46 +0000

Millennium Actress is a Japanese animated movie that stretches the movie-analogy machine to breaking point. With most movies, you can say something like “it’s like Seven Samurai in space” or “it’s like King Kong but with a robot”. With Millennium Actress, I can make no analogies because I have seen nothing else like it.

The movie tells the story of a Japanese actress through three parallel story-lines that are blurred together. In the “present”, the old actress is being interviewed by a producer and his cameraman. In flashbacks, we see what her life was like, but scenes from her life are intercut with scenes from her movies to tell a dream-like story.

I’m doing it no justice at all in this review, but please know that it touches a nerve for me, the way Big Fish does: that you can’t tell the story of anyone’s life by just relaying the facts. Sometimes you have to tell a good story to convey who someone was. Facts are waypoints.

Follow That Bird (1985)

Devanshu Mehta — Thu, 16 Jan 2020 12:00:00 +0000

In 1985, we piled into my mother’s car and went to watch Follow That Bird. My sister, her friends and me. I loved that movie; it was a road movie, before I knew road movies. It was a classic Muppet movie that wasn’t really a Muppet(tm) movie, before I really knew Muppet movies. This was the 6-year olds equivalent of an SNL sketch that turns into a movie. A full length Sesame Street movie.

Earlier this month, my older daughter went to watch Little Women with her best friend, while I stayed home with the 6-year old. And we watched Follow That Bird.

It’s still pretty great for 6-year olds.

Favorite Movies of the 2010s

Devanshu Mehta — Wed, 08 Jan 2020 16:05:04 +0000

Here are my favorite movies of the decade, in order of release date:

Inception
Moonrise Kingdom
Before Midnight
Frozen
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Inside Out
La La Land
San Junipero
The Florida Project
Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Parasite

In addition, I consider these two specials/one-person-shows to be of the highest order:

My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend by Mike Birbiglia
Nanette by Hannah Gadsby

These are not the “best”, but ones that will take me back to this decade whenever I think of them in the future.

I didn’t have kids in the decade before this, and now I do. I watched 3 movies a week back then, and now I’m lucky if I’ve watched one. And luckier still if isn’t a Disney re-watch.

Here is my list from 2000’s if anyone cares. And here is where you can follow my movie-watching activity on Letterboxd.

Building a Movie Diary

Devanshu Mehta — Sat, 04 Jan 2020 02:10:03 +0000

I use Letterboxd to record my movie watching diary. I use DayOne (occasionally) to journal things. For a while now, I’ve wanted have my Letterboxd entries show up in my DayOne journal. I figured other people may want to do the same thing, so here’s how I did it:

Step 1
Set up an “if-this-then-that” (IFTTT) task. IFTTT is a wonderful bit of internet glue that lets you set up a number of different background tasks such as: every time I post to Instagram, download the photo to dropbox. Or, every time Kottke.org is updated, save the link to my Pocket reading list. And so on.

There isn’t a specific task for gluing Letterboxd to DayOne, but there is one for sending an RSS feed to DayOne. Set that up by pointing it at your Letterboxd RSS feed. Here is mine, so you can find yours by plugging in your user name:
https://letterboxd.com/devanjedi/rss/

From now on, every time you update your Letterboxd diary, IFTTT will add an entry to your DayOne journal.

But what about all your movie watching history?

Step 2

Here’s a python script to download the last 50 entries in your diary.

You will have to install Feedparser.
Change the username on line 7 of the script to your username.
Run the script: python3 letterboxd.py > letterboxd.txt
Import the newly created letterboxd.txt in the File->Import option in the DayOne app.

Now you should have the last 50 Letterboxd entries in DayOne.

What about the entries before that? I’m working on an automated solution to that…

Devanshu Mehta — Sat, 29 Apr 2017 23:10:44 +0000

It’s time to get back to it.

I Built a Coffee-Can Radar

Devanshu Mehta — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 19:21:27 +0000

Yep, I did:

It’s Just Not Cricket

Devanshu Mehta — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 03:21:15 +0000

It’s just not cricket, but it is a cricket blog.

I started writing about cricket on a new blog– DeepBackwardPoint.com— 5 months ago. 110 blog posts and many thousand visitors later, I am still writing and having a blast. Go see.