Up, up and away!!

A: "Is it a bird? "

B: "Yes."

A: "Dammit, which movie are we in? Let me try again!
Is it a bird?"

(Prolonged silence)

B: "Don't know, can't say!"

A: "Play along, Spazzo! Its not like I am conducting some employee satisfaction survey here!"

B: "Ok, sorry!"

A: "Is it a bird? Is it a plane?"

B: "No, its Batman!!!"

A: "What the f***?"

B: "Where's your sense of humour, dude?"

A: (morosely) "I saw Krrish a few days ago."

B: (patting A on the back) "It must have been extremely traumatic for you, I am sorry."

Superman returned, and the closing credits of the movie said that this movie was dedicated to Dana and Christopher Reeve. Brandon Routh played the Man of Steel and Kevin Spacey was Lex Luthor.

But of course, you should probably be knowing all of that and then some. Thats what the IMDB trivia page for each movie is all about.

There is also this brown guy in the movie, some Indian-American, who played Kumar in 'Harold and Kumar go to White Castle', which is a super funny movie. This brown guy was put in the movie to satisfy the OBC (Other Brown Communities) quota recently instituted by Warner Brothers as part of the extension of their affirmative action drive.

Brown guy does not get to say a word, he just kicks Superman in one of the scenes. He just stands around looking menacing and evil and grins everytime Luthor spurts out some vitriolic statements in a manner that makes him look like a pedophile, maybe. This blatant discrimination against brown people by the script writers of the movie should be remedied in the subsequent movies that show Asians in substantially prominent roles (and by substantially prominent, I mean a slight upgradation from playing the half cut-open cadaver in autopsy room shots for John/Jane Doe bodies) along with sizeable monosyllabic utterances that can be reasonably passed off as dialogues.

Apart from all that, Superman Returns was just about brilliant. For someone who still is fascinated by the concept of an invulnerable superhero who can travel faster than a speeding bullet and fly with consummate ease, the movie was worth all the time spent on it.

A brilliant opening sequence of Krypton exploding, and some really cool special effects through the entire length of the movie even relegated the underwear and cape ensemble to the background.

The double standards that people adopt really amaze me. The very same people that might think that a 10 year old kid donning a Superman-like costume with a bathing towel for a cape and wearing his underwear on the outside of his pyjamas and trying to fly off the dining table and jumping down instead is cute, feel that someone just a little over twice his age doing exactly that, but with a bit of facial hair and slightly more build is absolutely deplorable and needs admission into an asylum.

Grown-ups sure suck. Trust Enid Blyton to have known this and never having sold out.

People get kicks out of fantasy, and out of things they want to do, but probably never will be able to.

Flying into outer space at will all by your own means, stopping bullets with one's bare hands, rescuing damsels in distress in the most dramatic of fashions and shrugging it away with a quick wave and a flight into oblivion, being able to use long-distance vision to check out the answers to questions in an exam, high speeds of travel that make vehicles and traffic jams unnecessary and insufficient obstacles to being in the right place at the right time are just among the few things that a whole lot of people would love to do, but alas!

Superman was apparently concieved by Jerry Seigel and Joe Shuster to alleviate people's tensions during the great depression, and he's come a long way since then. No superhero will ever come as close to being the greatest cartoon superhero that ever was.

Here's to more of the caped crusader. Up, up and away!!