Mathy

Lovely!

This year’s Oscar nominations have been announced. A very selected list of nominations and my raving and ranting appears below.

Best Picture
# Babel
# The Departed
# Letters from Iwo Jima
# Little Miss Sunshine
# The Queen

Pretty much what’s expected. The only change has been ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ instead of ‘Little Children’.

Best Actor
# Leonardo DiCaprio, Blood Diamond
# Ryan Gosling, Half Nelson
# Peter O’Toole, Venus
# Will Smith, The Pursuit of Happyness
# Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland

This category is very disappointing. First I did not expect to see Will Smith here for his movie ‘The Pursuit of Happyness’. I havent seen that sappy movie yet. Might watch it one of these days after the DVD comes out, if any friend is particularly interested. Watching that sappy movie is enough on my part. But, an Oscar nomation? PLEASEEEEEE! :gag:

Another major disappointment here is ‘Blood Diamond’. Dont mistake me. I like that movie. But, not like ‘The Departed’. I dont know what’s going on.

Half Nelson: I had been regretting the fact that I missed out this movie. But, now I can get it from the video stores, especially because of this nomination.

Eagerly waiting for ‘Forest Whitaker’s The Last King of Scotland’. Just last week caught Omar Sheriff in ‘Monsieur Ibrahim’ and thought of Peter O’Toole and ‘Lawrence of Arabia’.

Best Actress
# Penelope Cruz, Volver
# Judi Dench, Notes on a Scandal
# Helen Mirren, The Queen
# Meryl Streep, The Devil Wears Prada
# Kate Winslet, Little Children

I love all the actresses who’ve been nominated this year. Haven’t watched any movies yet, though. I dont know if I will ever watch ‘The Devil Wears Prada’. But, you never know.

Best Supporting Actor
# Alan Arkin, Little Miss Sunshine
# Jackie Earle Haley, Little Children
# Djimon Hounsou, Blood Diamond
# Eddie Murphy, Dreamgirls
# Mark Wahlberg, The Departed

No surprises here. No disappointments either.

Best Supporting Actress
# Adriana Barraza, Babel
# Cate Blanchett, Notes on a Scandal
# Abigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine
# Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls
# Rinko Kikuchi, Babel

I love love Cate Blanchett. I might write a post about her one of these days. Have been thinking about it for quite sometime now. I am quite happy to see Abigail Breslin here for ‘Little Miss Sunshine’. I loved her in Manoj Shyamalan’s ‘Signs’.

Having said all that. I am pretty sure Jennifer Hudson would win the Oscar for ‘Dreamgirls’. And I for one would be rooting for her.

Best Director
# Alejandro Gonz??lez I????rritu, Babel
# Martin Scorsese, The Departed
# Clint Eastwood, Letters from Iwo Jima
# Stephen Frears, The Queen
# Paul Greengrass, United 93

Usual Suspects. My favourite suspects at that. Only surprise here (for me) is Paul Greengrass for ‘United 93′.

Best Original Screenplay
# Babel
# Letters from Iwo Jima
# Little Miss Sunshine
# Pan’s Labyrinth
# The Queen

‘Pan Labyrinth’ was released here last Friday. Have been thinking of going for this movie. Only hurdle is that it is released in the most expensive theater in town.

Only surpise addtion here is ‘Little Miss Sunshine’. Would have expected ‘Little Children’ here. hmm..

Best Adapted Screenplay
# Borat
# Children of Men
# The Departed
# Little Children
# Notes on a Scandal

No surprises here.

Foreign Language Film
# After the Wedding
# Days of Glory
# The Lives of Others
# Pan’s Labyrinth
# Water

Havent seen any of these movies. Canadian entry ‘Water’ has been selected. CBC just broadcasted a song from Water, to celebrate the inclusion of ‘Water’ in the Oscar race.

Animated Feature
# Cars
# Happy Feet
# Monster House

Have heard a lot about ‘Happy Feet’. My young relatives still talk about the movie. In this environmentally conscious atmosphere, the odds in favourite is ‘Happy Feet’ (I think).

Music (Score)
# Babel
# The Good German
# Notes on a Scandal
# Pan’s Labyrinth
# The Queen

Quite surprised to see ‘The Good German’ here. As I havent seen any movies nominated in this category yet. I am curious if any of the musical scores would capture my attention.

Music (Song)
# “I Need to Wake Up” – An Inconvenient Truth
# “Listen” – Dreamgirls
# “Love You I Do” – Dreamgirls
# “Our Town” – Cars
# “Patience” – Dreamgirls

Dreamgirls has been nominated following the paths of ‘Moulain Rouge’ and ‘Chicago’. The songs I’ve heard so far are pretty good. Only disappointment here would be A.R.Rahman not being nominated. Especially because there’s been a pretty loud buzz about him getting nominated not for one or two but THREE movie collaborations. Well, tomorrow is another day.

Last year I was so eager to watch the Oscar telecast. Reason? Host Jon Stewart. For all my enthusiasm, all I got was this HUGE lump of disappointment and $%$*.

Art Buchwald made us fight for the Sunday edition of Hindu. His hilarious style was a bit difficult to understand in the beginning, to a girl from Sri Lanka who was able to barely read and comprehend English. But as the years went by, Art Buchwald became one of my favourite columnists. I was deeply saddened to learn that Art passed away yesterday.

His Washington Times columns could be read here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/style/columns/buchwaldart/

Art Buchwald’s TIME magazine interview: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1205371,00.html

To learn more about the man and his art: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Buchwald

Here are a few famous quotes of his:

I worship the quicksand he walks in (of Richard Nixon)

If you attack the establishment long enough and hard enough, they will make you a member of it

Every time you think television has hit its lowest ebb, a new programme comes along to make you wonder where you thought the ebb was

Just when you think there’s nothing to write about, Nixon says, “I am not a crook.” Jimmy Carter says, “I have lusted after women in my heart.” President Reagan says, “I have just taken a urinalysis test, and I am not on dope”

People are broad-minded. They’ll accept the fact that a person can be an alcoholic, a dope fiend, a wife beater and even a newspaperman, but if a man doesn’t drive, there’s something wrong with him

You can’t make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you’re doing is recording it

If you are interested in setting up your own website or having a blog in your space, then this is for you.

1and1.com is offering 50% discount on their hosting solutions.

Most of us would be happy with 5GB space, which would fit our needs perfectly.

Here’s the 1and1 Beginner hosting solution which would cost $1.50 per month.

1 domain name
5 GB web space
250 GB traffic

MySQL Database (100 MB) - 10
Scripts Supported: PHP3, PHP4,PHP5

Firewall Protection
Daily Backup of your Website
24/7 Phone & E-mail Support

It also includes some marketing help. The vouchers offered are:
Microsoft adCenter - $50 Voucher
Google AdWords - $25 Voucher
Citysearch - $25 Voucher

Apart from this, regular services like

Search Engine Tools
Access to Google Webmaster Tools?
Marketing Manual
1&1 WebsiteBuilder
1&1 Blog
1&1 Photo Gallery
Virus & Spam Guard
Search Engine Tools

are offered too.

Those who want to have Wordpress blogs, can make use of the Wordpress MU setup, which needly only a click or two. Or you could setup the regular Wordpress blog yourself.

Other hosting solutions offerd by 1and1 are:

1&1 Home - $2.50
1&1 Business - $5.00
1&1 Developer - $10.00

Please choose Linux Hosting, which is way better than the MS hosting. This is my personal choice. You could go for MS hosting, if that’s what you desire.

For more information:

Thanks:Flickr

Palmyrah or Panai is very close to every Sri Lankan Tamil’s heart. We tend to use all parts of the tree. Northern Srilanka does not get much rainfall and Palmyrahs seem to flourish here. The scene above is how a typical village looks like from afar. I remember getting excited on seeing these trees when on long walks with my grandmother. Clusters of palmyrahs means human habitats and one can always request drinking water.

It’s been years since I left Sri Lanka. But, whenever I see a Palmyrah in India, I would be transported to Pungudutheevu, my home town. My family used to tease me a lot because I seem to remember more from the two years spent in Pungudutheevu compared to everything else - be it school lessons or even recent events.

Thanks:Flickr

As I said earlier, we tend to use all parts of the Palmyrah tree. The trunks are used as building materials. The Palmyrah has so many uses it’s practically impossible to list them all. To be truthful, I have even forgotten the different ways the Palmyrah was used back home. From what I remember the leaves were used mainly to make the sleeping mats. Narrow but lengthy coils of mats were also made. The mats were used when there are a lot of people in the house. These mats would be uncoiled and people would sit on them to be fed breakfast, lunch or dinner. Mats were also made to dry things on.

Containers of varying sizes would be made to store and transport goods both edible and not. One such container is called the ‘kadaham’ and it is so versatile. It could be used to transport paddy, rice, lentils or even cooked rice when there is a huge gathering to be fed. It could also be used to remove waste from the yard. We had 5-6 kadaham for different purposes. Puttu would be steamed in containers made just for this purpose. Well, being versatile, the same ‘puttu steamer’ would be used to drain water from washed rice and lentils. How long the ‘neethuppetti’ or ‘puttu steamer’ lasts depends on the usage. One household would have more than one and if more’s needed all one has to do is spend around 15 minutes to make a new one. Additional point in favour is that all these are bio-degradable and everything else is used as fuel.

Palmyrah tree has edible parts too. The mature fruit - ‘panam pazham’ could be roasted in fire and could be eaten just like that. Paniyaaram could be made from it and todate that remains my favourite snack. More on Panampazham and other countless uses of Panai or Palmyrah later. Another day, perhaps!

The reason for this post is ‘Panagatti’ ‘Karuppatti’, ‘Panai Vellam’ or Palm Sugar. The fruit when young and just forming would produce a sap that could use to produce ‘arrack’ - an alcohol. The same sap could be boiled to make Palm Sugar. The sap would be boiled and would be packaged in a container made from palmyrah leaves just for this.. You can see it in the photo above.

Palm Sugar - ‘Panangatti’ is used to make sweets. Unfortunately I dont know much about the recipes. [Time to call family, eh?;)] When young, we used to be given milk with a bit of palm sugar mixed in. It is our nightly ritual at home. I have recreated it here for Indira’s brainchild - Jihva For Ingredients. Kay of Towards a Better Tomorrow is hosting this month and the ingredient is Jaggery. With all my connection and passion to Palmyrah, how could I not participate. hmm?!

This is also my first time taking part in any online cooking event.

Hot milk infused with Palm Sugar

Recipe:
Milk: 1 cup
Palm Sugar: 1/2 tsp (or according to taste)

Boil milk. Add desired amount of Palm Sugar. Tastes very good on cold wintry nights.

Now to the non-regular recipe.

Caramelized apples with icecream

Recipe:
Apple: 1/2 apple
Palm Sugar: 1/2 tsp
Butter - 1/8 tsp

Peel, core and slice the apple. Add butter to the heated pan. Layer the pan with sliced apple. Cover and let it cook. Stir, once in a while. After about 2 minutes or once the apple is half cooked sprinkle the palm sugar. Cover and cook for a few more minutes.

On the serving dish, scoop out the icecreams and layer the caramelized apples.

In Tamil:
JFI:Jaggery - ?????????/??????????/??????????

for JFI-Jaggery hosted by Kay of ‘Towards A Better Tomorrow’

For more information on Palmyrah trees - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmyrah
Kitul Pani: There’s another variety of Jaggery available in Sri Lanka. It’s the staple of Sinhala people. It’s called Kitul Pani. here’s some more info.

Canadian Press

PARIS (AP) - Beloved French actor Philippe Noiret, whose neighbourly face was among the most familiar on the silver screen in France, died Thursday of cancer.

He was 76. The exact circumstances surrounding his death were not immediately known. Friends said he had been battling cancer. Noiret made more than 125 movies in his 55 years entertaining on stage and in the cinema. Among his first big successes was Louis Malle’s 1960 movie “Zazie dans le metro” (Zazie in the Metro).

Among the doyens of French cinema, Noiret made his last movie this year, “Trois Amis” (Three Friends) under director Michel Boujenah.

With a face and a bearing that could portray both the middle class man or the elegant aristocrat - but not a romantic hero - Noiret conquered his audience with his exceptional skills as an actor. He plumbed his Everyman face to play a variety of roles, calling himself an “artisan actor.”

Above all a French star, Noiret had his share of international acclaim, notably in Guiseppe Tornatore’s 1988 “Cinema Paradiso” and in the 1994 hit “Il Postino,” (The Postman) in which he played Pablo Neruda, a poet and diplomat who counsels his mailman. Noiret won his first Cesar, the French version of the Oscar award, in 1976 for the dramatic “Vieux Fusil” (Old Gun) with Romy Schneider and gained a second in 1990 with “La Vie et rien d’autre” (Life and Nothing Else).

Praise poured in as soon as Noiret’s death was made public, with French Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres calling the actor “a great among the greats.”

For Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, the worlds of theatre and film have suddenly found themselves orphaned by Noiret’s death.

“Through his voice, his allure, his panache, Philippe Noiret knew how to seize and express something within the French soul,” Villepin said in a statement.

“The silhouette and the voice, so tender and familiar, will be missed by all.”

Over the years, Noiret worked with all of France’s top directors, from Claude Chabrol to Bertrand Tavernier, playing both dramatic and comic roles and all manner of middle-class men.

Bertrand Blier, who made nine movies with Noiret, said his acting and his humanity were both exceptional.

“He is someone who counted in my life…someone who took you by the hand,” Blier said, praising Noiret’s “paternal” qualities that he felt despite his own advanced age.

For actor Lambert Wilson, Noiret was “an extremely just, moving actor.” Above all, he was a man with a heart, Wilson said on France-Info radio.

“The art of living, companionship were fundamental things in his life,” Wilson said.

“He was such a charming man, so attentive to others with lots of humour,” but also “terribly sane and attentive to the quality of life of others and his own.”

Born Oct. 1, 1933, in the northern French city Lille, Noiret began life as an actor with theatre studies, touring with the Theatre Nationale Populaire in Paris. His movie debut was in 1956, in Agnes Varda’s “La Pointe courte.” For a decade he was a regular in films, having his first starring role in 1967 with “Alexandre le Bienheureux” in which he portrayed a man with a passion for laziness.

Patrice Leconte, who directed Noiret in two films, said he learned only recently that Noiret was battling cancer. Speaking on France-Info, he remembered the actor who could evoke both the zany and the deadly serious.

“He had a notable side, but behind this…there was craziness,” Leconte said.

“That is what I want to remember tonight.”

Funeral plans were not immediately known. Noiret is survived by his wife, Monique and a daughter, Frederique.

DAVID JOHNSTON, The Gazette

Rural Montreal, an endangered species, hangs on precariously at the far western tip of the island. One of the heritage homes in Senneville, Montbriant, was featured in the movie The Aviator.
Photograph by : GORDON BECK, THE GAZETTE

Next spring, the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada is planning to hold a ceremony to mark recognition of parts of the West Island around

Senneville as a national historical district.

While the board’s decision in 2003 was based in large part on the distinctly sub-rural character of Montreal Island’s most western end, it was also made with its building heritage in mind.

Along Senneville Rd., in particular, there are many examples of architectural magnificence that are at least equal to anything that can be found on the upper reaches of Westmount or Outremont.

One of the most impressive properties is the so-called Montbriant estate at 180 Senneville Rd., which is owned by Robert Bazos, former owner of the defunct Perrette chain of depanneurs.

Built in 1913, it featured prominently in the Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator, as the grand Connecticut estate where young Katharine Hepburn brings Hughes home to meet her family.

One of the most historic sites is the ruins of old Fort Senneville, built by the French in the 1690s to ward off Iroquois incursions.

In 1776, it was torched by infamous General Benedict Arnold to free American prisoners held there during the Revolutionary War.

Sonia Venne tours the remains of Fort Senneville, built around 1693 and razed by U.S. invaders during the 1776-1783 war.
Photograph by : GORDON BECK, THE GAZETTE

Today, the fort can be found on a 35-hectare private lakefront lot north of Highway 40, where Montreal cardiologist Yannick Beaulieu lives with his wife, Sonia Venne, and one-year-old son, Emanuel.

Like her husband, Venne is a native of the Lanaudiere region. She frequently sees deer walking along the lakefront or standing in the middle of the fort ruins, where the land is clear of trees and mosquitoes in summertime.

The deer also like to sleep on the property’s many beds of tiger lilies, she says.

“I can’t believe I’m living in Montreal,” Venne said of her rural surroundings. “It feels like back home for me.”

DAVID JOHNSTON, The Gazette

An ecologically protected corridor, mainly secluded woods, flanks the small Anse a l’Orme River.
Photograph by : GORDON BECK, THE GAZETTE

The prospect of a return of commercial agriculture to the western end of Montreal Island has given local conservationists some new arguments in their favour.

The fledgling agricultural revival is, in fact, just one of several developments that bode well for the preservation of the sub-rural character of the region.

Behind the scenes, the city of Montreal, with input from neighbouring suburbs where required, has begun quietly negotiating with private developers to buy back large tracts of ecologically significant land.

In lieu of cash, developers are being offered inner-city vacant lots, as well as zoning concessions.

Among other things, the city is offering developers the right to build more densely along existing suburban train lines, Helen Fotopulos, a member of the city’s executive committee, said in a recent interview.

At the same time, the Nature Conservancy of Canada, which is supported by some of Canada’s richest families, has begun buying selected lands and rights of way on some undeveloped properties to increase the prospects that they will never be developed.

“A lot of this has to be done on the QT to keep speculators at bay,” said Liz Morgan of Senneville, great-granddaughter of James Morgan, who in 1891 with his brother Henry created the downtown Morgan’s department store, which currently houses The Bay’s flagship Ste. Catherine St. W. store.

In negotiations with private landowners, the city is trying to increase its ownership stake in properties lining Anse a l’Orme Rd., which traverses Ste. Anne de Bellevue and Pierrefonds.

The four-kilometre road, which runs from Highway 40 to Senneville Rd., and which has absolutely no development along it (except beware-of-deer signs), crosses the last remaining river on the island of Montreal that hasn’t been built over yet - the Riviere a l’Orme.

Were it not for the fact that the river runs mainly through secluded forests and fallow farm fields that can’t be seen from any road, the river wouldn’t be what it is - Montreal’s best-kept ecological secret.

DAVID JOHNSTON
The Gazette

Alison Hackney and Claude Gemme prepare to till a winter crop into the fields to prevent winter soil erosion. Hackney figures she’ll finish for the season around Nov. 15.
Photograph by : GORDON BECK, THE GAZETTE

Of all the things people on Montreal Island go to bed worrying about, how to stop deer from eating the leaves on a commercial beet crop shouldn’t be one of them.

But precisely such a dilemma has been bothering Alison Hackney of Senneville in recent weeks as she wraps up her autumn harvest after the wettest growing season in 60 years.

Hackney is a farmer - a farmer on the island of Montreal, no less. That’s rare enough in itself; but so, too, are those deer that have come to regard her 15-hectare farm as their own private fast-food outlet.

“They can be pesky,” Hackney said.

On the other hand, they are not as rare as they were 30 years ago, when galloping urbanization wiped out the last cluster of family farms and alleged deer sightings were often more urban legend than reality.

Today, the farming way of life is sowing the seeds of an agricultural revival on the western end of the island, thanks to growing demand for organic produce.

Created in 1996, Hackney’s Ferme du Fort Senneville has helped pave the way more recently for Stephen Homer’s 25-hectare Ferme du Zephyr and David Merson’s two-hectare Ferme Mange-Tout. Collectively, these three organic farms

in Senneville, population 864, produce a wide range of vegetables and fruits without the

use of artificial herbicides or pesticides that are common in mainstream commercial agriculture.

The principal customer base for organic farms are individuals who pay between $300 and $600 at the beginning of the growing season for a weekly basket of produce. In addition, Hackney sells at the Saturday produce market in Ste. Anne de Bellevue that ended its six-month season yesterday. Homer, meanwhile, supplies two Notre Dame de Grace specialty stores as well as 357c, a private club in Old Montreal founded and owned by high-tech entrepreneur Daniel Langlois.

“Montreal Island is one of the best places for an organic farm to be, because the customer base is so handy,” Homer said.

Together, the three organic farms in Senneville represent the future of farming on the island, if, indeed, farming is to have a future.

Elsewhere, there’s a 100-hectare apple orchard in Senneville that exists primarily as a municipal tax writeoff, and a farm in Pierrefonds - involving the Bibeaus, one of the West Island’s oldest farm families - on land leased by the Transport Department that is slated to be used for road-network expansion.

The three organic farms occupy 42 hectares of land, or the equivalent of 20 Canadian football fields.

That’s a lot, or not very much, depending on one’s perspective. But with organic farming, you don’t need a lot of land because it’s not how much you can grow, but how you grow it that counts most with customers, who are willing to pay a premium for organic products. The traditional economy-of-scale advantages of large-scale commercial farming don’t apply across the board, as they once did.

Whether this budding agricultural revival in Senneville leads to something bigger might depend, of course, on whether demand for organic produce continues to grow. But if it does, there will be no shortage of farm land on the western end of the island to accommodate agricultural growth.

For one thing, the western end of the island still has agricultural land, albeit fallow land, that continues to be protected from development under provincial law. Those lands, totalling more than 1,000 hectares, are in Senneville, Ste. Anne de Bellevue and Pierrefonds. There are also substantial tracts of farmland that have long since been rezoned for residential or industrial use, but lie dormant today.

The image of abandoned farmhouses and crumbling barns is common in the northwest part of the West Island. A good example is the landscape along Ste. Marie Rd. in Ste. Anne de Bellevue, north of Highway 40, east and west of Morgan Blvd.

Rusted garden tools, tattered mail-order encyclopedia volumes and pairs of ancient leather shoes lie scattered on these properties as evidence of a West Island that has long ago disappeared.

Hackney has been seeing deer all season. They ate the hearts out of her lettuce heads during the summer, and more recently they have been eating the leaves on her beets. That’s a pain, because without the leaves it’s hard to find the valuable vegetable roots hidden in the soil.

So that got Hackney thinking, and she came up with this idea: “A single strand of electrified wire with some tin foil on the wire and some peanut butter on the tin foil; the deer puts its tongue on the peanut butter, then runs away.”

She used it, and it seems to be working very well.

These days, Hackney has been using her two Belgian horses, Fanny and Fine, with help from an off-island farmer, Claude Gemme, to till a winter crop into her fields to prevent winter soil erosion. She figures she’ll finish for the season around Nov. 15.

The horses are led out of a stable a few metres from Highway 40, near the mouth of the Ile aux Tourtes Bridge. The audio backdrop of Canada’s second-largest city gearing up for work is the only sensory indication to suggest this pastoral scene is anything but classically rural.

A.J. Canagaratna
26.08.1934-11.10.2006
ALOSIOUS JEYARAJ CANAGARATNA

The Power of A.J.Canagaratne

A Great Scholar of the Thamils of Sri Lanka Mr. A.J. Canagaratne was passed away on the early ours of 11th of October 2006 in his early seventies. He was a person who had functioned like an alternative Institution for generations of scholars who are marginalized by the ‘powerful people’ within the ultimate higher institutions among the Thamils of Sri Lanka.

A.J.Canagaratne never posed himself as an utmost Intellectual but generations of intellectuals and artists not only from Thamils of Sri Lanka or all the other nationals of Sri Lanka but also from people outside Sri Lanka will always respect his caliber.

The power and beauty of AJ is his genuine intellectual characteristic. He is always conscious of his words and the correctness of the information. He took much effort to share authentic information.

AJ is very strong enough to share new things to others and push them to new frontiers to bring fruits of knowledge and skill to the people who nourished the intellectuals with their hard earned money for the free education system.

The sharp and subtle arguments and interpretations of AJ are the fruits of his deep knowledge.

AJ is an intellectual of the people but he seldom uses the word people.

Brevity is the essence of AJ but he is an epic!

Sivagnanam Jeyasankar
http://thirdeye2005.blogspot.com

My Tamil post on A.J. Canagaratna