LAGAAN!

We rented Lagaan last night. I'm not a big Hindi movie fan, but I really liked this. Definitely the best Hindi-movie cricketing western ever. It even had twangy spaghetti-western music! And the mysterious stranger (in this case a Sikh), the doctor, the kid, the Muslim, the spy and the crippled untouchable who invents spin-bowling. Kind of like the Magnificent Seven, except that since it revolved around a cricket game it was the Magnificent Eleven.

It was really entertaining--one of those movies where all the bad guys have twirly mustaches and Love Conquers All. My husband, who usually complains about how the bad guys in movies are always English, or at least have English accents, didn't complain about the fact that in this one the English really were the bad guys (because if the villagers don't win the cricket game they have to pay triple the years tax, even though it's the second year of a drought). And I was reminded of why I love my husband when I turned to him in the end and said "Wow, they really rolled out every obscure cricketing rule in that one," and he said, "Oh, no," and proceeded to tell me all the ways they could have had the hero score a final FIVE, instead of the usual six, and all the really obscure rules they could have used in the game...

Plus, the musical numbers were only a little gratuitous.

In other news, the friends list meme is making me feel loved, so I think I'll go fill it out myself.

Who are these people? Do I know them?

This may be an exercise in cliquishness. In fact, the whole LJ thing may be an exercise in cliquishness. But that's a rant for another day. Instead, here's my version of the ( friends list meme )