Tremors and Dallas Austin

Hey friends,

On Thursday morning, at 1am, there were tremors felt in Dubai/ Sharjah. This isnt the first time, but something like the 3rd time already. The last one happened in November last year, when I was in Pakistan. I always fear for this city should God forbid an earthquake strikes here. When I was in university, my civil engineering professor, who is also an earthquake expert, claims that if an earthquake strikes here, then the building will fall down like a pack of cards, all because the engineers here dont take into consideration the earthquake codes when designing buildings! It’s no joke that Dubai/ Sharjah is experiencing tremors of this kind. I mean, God forbid, what if there is an earthquake and the older buildings fall down? It’s not a good thing to think off.

On a more lighter note, I am not sure how many of you have heard that supermodel Naomi Campbell celebrated her birthday here last month at Burj Al Arab, which was spread over three days epitomizing the height of luxury and extravagance. One of her friend invited for the birthday was rapper star, who I honestly had not heard off before, Dallas Austin from the States. He was apprehended here at the Dubai airport for possessing cocaine. Now we all know that drugs are forbidden from being brought into the country and it carries a jail sentence.

However, the judges here in Dubai are thinking of pardoning Dallas Austin, all because they think he brought in the cocaine for personal use and not for peddling. So, like, can anyone bring in cocaine and claim it’s for personal use? I don’t think so. It becomes so clear that the judges here want to let go of Dallas Austin because he is a celebrity and he is an American, and should Dubai put him into jail, the American media will give Dubai a very bad name! At the back of my mind, I knew he would be released, because Dubai likes to caters to the interests of the West. I wonder why the ordinary people who are caught are not being pardoned?

Mansur

Scar(r)ed for Life

Hey friends,

It didn’t help when A Nightmare on Elm Street came out, and my uncle would scare me into thinking Freddy Kruger was hiding in my attic. He claimed the reflection I saw on the ceiling A/C vent were Freddy’s eyes. The scratching noise on my window were Freddy’s blades on his glove (it was just a tree!)

What all this did to me was sent me on a rebound action. Instead of being scared, I chose to prove to them I am not scared, and soon started watching scary movies. I watched with much earnest all horror movies like Omen, The Shining as well as The Exorcist. I also watched cheap b-grade horror movies like A Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween and Friday the 13th. I developed an affinity for Stephen King books, and before I knew it, I was a huge horror movie fan, till today.

So without further ado, here are my top 10 most scariest films of all time.

1. The Exorcist
I saw this for the first time when I was 12. Underaged to watch an R-rated film. I was so freaked out half way through as I was watching it alone at night, I had to stop the movie and finish it the following morning. It’s supposedly based on a real life exorcism case, but what made it scary was the realism factor, the very life-like story, and to see the transformation of a sweet 12 year old into a demonic figure was too scary. Modern day horror films just cannot compete with The Exorcist in fear factor. In fact, the hospital scenes are scary enough. The Tubular Bells music is scary on its own!

Scariest Moment: The entire movie!
Fear Factor: 9/10

2. The Shining
A Stephen King classic. The story of Jack Torrance and his wife and son, who looks after a deserted hotel in the winter in the midst of snowy mountains. The creepy atmosphere, the haunting music and the scary transformation of Jack into a maniacal husband/ father wanting to chop off the heads of his wife/ son.

Scariest Moment: The image of Jack afetr he is frozen to death (that image was imprinted in my mind for a long time!)
Fear Factor: 9/10

3. The Omen (1977)
The first movie of its kind dealing with the Anti-Christ. The idea that an Anti-Christ would be born is very much real as mentioned in the Holy Books, so a movie based on that idea upped the fear factor.

Scariest Moment: When Robert finally opens the grave to discover that his adopted son was indeed a Jackal!
Fear Factor: 8/10

4. Rosemary’s Baby
Another one that followed the similar theme based on Anti-Christ. The birth of the baby, the neighbors turning out to be Satan worshippers and the ending. It was the ending that made it all the more scary because the Anti-Christ is born and Rosemary loses her battle.

Scariest Moment: When Rosemary is led in a trance whereby she is raped by Satan
Fear Factor: 7/10

5. Carrie
Another Stephen King Classic. Carrie dealt with her life as she is tormented and bullied in school, but little do others realize Carrie has telekinetic powers, which is unleased at her prom after she is dumped on with pig’s blood. It’s outdated, but on it’s own, it’s scary enough.

Scariest Moment: Carrie’s arm reaching out to grab her friend at her gravesite. Still freaks me out!
Fear Factor: 7/10

6. The Blair Witch Project
A very controversial choice for many, but a year before the movie was released the world was convinced of the legend of the Blair Witch through it’s website. I too was caught up in it, and so when the movie came out, I watched it on a school night, all alone in the massive theatre. I was freaked out because I was led to believe the footage was all real. The ending totally freaked me out and I was not able to sleep that night as I went back home all alone.

Scariest Moment: The end where Heather enters the basement to see her friend Mike standing, facing the wall, when Heather is suddenly knocked out. *shivers*
Fear Factor: 9/10

7. The Silence of the Lamb
I had read the book, and I remember getting a shiver down my spine towards the end when Agent Starling is at the killer’s house, and she sees a moth, which confirms to her she is facing the notorious serial killer! I panicked as I feared for Agent Starling! The movie captured that fear quite well. This movie is more of a psychological horror as it’s all in the mind.

Scariest Moment: When Hannibal the Cannibal talks about what he did with a man: he hate his liver with chianti…!
Fear Factor: 7/10

8. It
A mini series based on Stephen King’s massive novel. As a kid, this movie freaked me out because of the devlish clown. I never looked at a clown the way I used to after seeing this movie! I was convinced clows were people behind a disguise whose sole aim was to entice kids with balloons and treats to kill them! It dealt with the issue of fears kids have, and how that fear, if not taken care off carries on into the adult life too. These kids, come back to the town as adults to kill off that fear.

Scariest Moment: The opening scene where a kid has a conversation with the clown in the gutter. Next minute we know, the poor kid is dragged down the gutter through the narrow opening!
Fear Factor: 5/10

9. Prince of Darkness
A bunch of PhD Students investigate an old church where they find some water container, and slowly over time realize they are being used to bring Satan into the world. There is so much tension as the movie builds up to the finale. Will Satan be released into the world, or will our heros save the world? It’s again an all too realistic and clever movie. The haunting music is enough to unsettle you.

Scariest Moment: Satan’s hand coming out of the mirror…will he come out?
Fear Factor: 8/10

10. Misery
Misery is one of my all time favorite movie. Based on a novel by Stephen King of the same name, Misery is about a famed author who crashes his car in a remote mountainous area, where he is rescued and held hostage by his number one fan Annie. The whole sense of isolation, being held against your will in a lonely area by a crazed woman is scary enough. How the writer manages to hold his battle with Annie forms the rest of the story. There is a lot of tension and suspense in the movie, and everytime I watch it, I I still get tense and excited by it. There are only two main characters, and Annie is one crazy and scary woman to be around! (Annie played by Kathy Bates won best actress Oscar for her role!)

Scariest Moment: The “hobbling” scene, where Annie breaks the writer’s ankles with a sledgehammer.
Fear Factor: 8/10

Other Notable Mentions: Alien, The Thing, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, The Elephant Man, The Fly, Friday the 13th, The Sixth Sense, Reeker, Wolf Creek, The Descent

Mansur

Movie :: Reeker

Hello friends,

Sometimes independent horror movies are scarier and better made than
the mainstream horror movies. Reeker is one such case, and having seen
The Omen 666 recently, the makers of Omen should have sought a lesson
from the makers of Reeker.

Reeker is one of those low budget, independent horror film that many
will not have heard about. I didn’t know anything about it till it was
screened here. The movie may start off like any other horror movie,
but this one is actually quite well made.

Three guys (Jack, Trip and Nelson) and two girls (Gretchen and Cookie)
are on their way through a lone desert highway. Jack is blind, which
Trip finds out later. Trip himself has stolen a massive dose of
Ecstasy pill, and is somewhat on the run from the guy he stole from.
The second Gretchen finds out Trip has illegal amount of Ecstasy
pills, she stops the car and asks him to get out. Cookie takes the
opportunity to go to the toilet. Suddenly, the ground shakes with such
a force, as if a nuclear explosion has taken place. Jack, the blind
guy, can immediately sense that an earthquake on a scale of 5.12 has
taken place. They all pile up and get to the nearest motel, which
seems abandoned, where their car stops working. Trip begins to realize
something funny is going on. Soon, the guy from whom Trip had stole
the drug is on their case. During the night, a stranger passes by
looking for his wife. But something else is going on. They begin to
smell something funny. Cookie goes out, and she smells something and
she knows she is dead. Trip and Nelson also smell the weird smell and
they face directly with the Reeker!

Gretchen finds clues in the abandoned motel. She and Jack have to face
the Reeker too, but they can get away safely if they “fight” the
Reeker. How Gretchen and her blind friend Jack make an attempt to
escape forms the rest of the story.

However, the cool thing is that there is a massive twist at the end, a
la The Sixth Sense. You don’t see it coming, and once the twist is
revealed do you realize why things happened the way they did. It’s
actually a pretty clever horror movie. True to its genre, there
definitely some scenes that stood out and made you scared. The brief
opening scene is scary enough, with the sliced-in-half dog walking on
its two front legs!

Enough said!

Mansur

Consider This…

Consider This

After Fred Astaire’s first screen test, the memo from the testing director of MGM, dated 1933, said, “can’t act! Slightly Bald! Can dance a little!” Astaire kept that memo over the fireplace in his Beverly Hills home.

Socrates was called, “An immoral corrupter of youth.”

When Peter J. Daniel was in the fourth grade, his teacher, Mrs. Phillips, constantly said, “Peter J. Daniel, you’re no good, you’re a bad apple and you’re never going to amount to anything.” Peter was totally illiterate until he was 26. A friend stayed up with him all night and read him a copy of Think and Grow Rich. Now he owns the street corners he used to fight on and just published his latest book: Mrs. Phillips, You Were Wrong.

Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women, was encouraged to find work as a servant or seamstress by her family.

Beethoven handled the violin awkwardly and preferred playing his own compositions instead of improving his technique. His teacher called him hopeless as a composer.

The parents of the famous opera singer Enrico Caruso wanted him to be an engineer. His teachers said he had no voice at all and could not sing.

Charles Darwin, father of the Theory of Evolution, gave up a medical career and was told by his father, “You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat catching.” In his autobiography, Darwin wrote, “I was considered by my father, a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard in intellect.

Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor for lack of ideas. Walt Disney also went bankrupt several times before he built Disneyland.

Thomas Edison’s teachers said he was too stupid to learn anything.

Albert Einstein did not speak until he was four years old and didn’t read until he was seven. His teacher described him as “mentally slow, unsociable and adrift forever in his foolish dreams.” He was expelled and refused admittance to Zurich Polytechnic School.

Louis Pasteur was only a mediocre pupil in undergraduate studies and ranked 15 out of 22 in chemistry.

Isaac Newton did very poorly in grade school.

The sculptor Rodin’s father said, “I have an idiot for a son.” Described as the worst pupil in the school, Rodin failed three times to secure admittance to the school of art. His uncle called him uneducable.

Leo Tolstoy, author of War and Peace, flunked out of college. He was described as “both unable and unwilling to learn.”

Playwright Tennessee Williams was enraged when his play, Me, Vasha was not chosen in a class competition at Washington University where he was enrolled in English XVI. The teacher recalled that Williams denounced the judges’ choices and their intelligence.

F. W. Woolworth’s employers at the dry goods store said he had not enough sense to wait upon customers.

Henry Ford failed and went broke five times before he finally succeeded.

Babe Ruth, considered by sports historians to be the greatest athlete of all time and famous for setting the home run record, also holds the record for strikeouts.

Winston Churchill failed sixth grade. He did not become Prime Minister of England until he was 62, and then only after a lifetime of defeats and setbacks. His greatest contributions came when he was a “senior citizen.”

Eighteen publishers turned down Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull, before Macmillan finally published it in 1970. By 1975 it had sold more than seven million copies in the U.S. alone.

Richard Hooker worked for seven years on his humorous war novel, M*A*S*H, only to have it rejected by 21 publishers before Morrow decided to publish it. It became a runaway bestseller, spawning a blockbusting movie and highly successful television series.

By Jack Canfield and Mark V. Hansen
from A Cup of Chicken Soup for the Soul

Blunt saves a girl

Hey friends,

Remember how much I went on and on about how awesome James Blunt is with his music. Well, guess what, a girl who was in a coma was awoke when she heard the song You’re Beautiful by Blunt on the radio. Indeed, Blunt songs has power and passion in them.

Mansur