Summer’s nearly over, are you prepared?

Summer’s nearly over, are you prepared?

And it’s that final week before colleges and schools (except the IB ones) reopen. For those of you who thanked the holiday season for less traffic on the roads, it’s back to the chaos of honking cars and overcrowded lanes and the snarls that go with it all. If you’re feeling irritated already, just thinking of the above — there’s always the entertainment world to divert your attention. Now that May’s cricket season’s over and done, the big budget movies are being pulled out of the proverbial hat, all raring to go, starting with Akshay Kumar’s new offering, releasing today. Holly fare’s not far behind, as Kristen Stewart and Chalize Theron’s retelling of an epic fairy tale jostles for eyeballs alongside Will Smith’s blockbuster spy sequel. And then there’s nothing like a shower to spray out the heat and dust of a sweltering city. June 10th is the date we’re expecting the rains, say reports, and already, certain mornings see the rain clouds lining up, as if for a preview. Let’s hope the rains arrive in time to drown out the summer sizzle, but as any true blue Mumbaikar would know, they too arrive with their own set of problems — clogged drains, blockages… and wary memories of city floods. The more textbook rainy day thing to do, rather than fixate on the scary stuff, is of course, to revert to popular culture. In leisure hours, a coffee, a good book — or a good film, as it rains outside the window. And there are plenty of those (in the spirit of two just-concluded film festivals in our consciousness, here and in France) pushing the boundaries. Caught Incendies, a French-Canadian film, nominated in the Best Foreign Language Film category at last year’s Academy awards. It follows the journey of a twin brother and sister as they attempt to unravel the mystery of the life of a person they thought they knew all along — their mother. Along the course of their journeys of discovery, internal and external (that take them to an unnamed middle Eastern country), they discover horrible and horrifying truths about not just the woman who gave birth to them, but their own identity as well. A powerful and sometimes appalling watch, not hesitating to touch on sensitive subject matter — rape, incest, and ultimately: recovery. Saw another film dealing with sensitive subject matter, also nominated at the 2011 Oscars in the same category — a Polish offering, In Darkness. This one tracks the internal metamorphosis of a Polish sewer worker who hides a family of Jews in the drains in the Nazi occupied Poland of World War II. In the magical way the universe has, of showing sudden, unexpected light amidst grave darkness, the Pole’s ‘business arrangement’ with the Jews, after a period of time, develops into something deeper and more extraordinary. And to add more magic to oft-grim reality — this one’s based on a true story.