There are some movies that make you globetrot; tunes you can’t stop humming on your road trips and books that inspire wanderlust. As the Beatles would say, you’ve ‘got a good reason to take the easy way out’. So, put your feet up and shake your hair down (or vice versa) for these upcoming movies and books, geared to take you places.

On The Screen

Oscar And Jim
He wants to see Jim Morrison’s grave, she Oscar Wilde’s. Iain Weatherby charts a turbulent weekend in Paris.
Alibaug
Trips home to meet a dying professor change people’s lives in Sanjay Gupta’s latest offering.
Munnabhai Chale Amerika
Everyone’s favourite hoodlums-with-hearts hip-hop it up in the USA in the third installment of this hugely popular series.
The Road
Oscars of a different sort should be in evidence here. Viggo Mortensen stars in the adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s apocalyptic odyssey.
Fast And The Furious - 4
The Mexican desert is the backdrop for the latest installment in this crazy-caper franchise.

From The Shelf, Into Your Tote
Jeff in Venice, Death In Varanasi
By Geoff Dyer
Two ancient, watery cities connected by one madcap story in Dyer’s new novel. Dyer, whose writing has been called ‘acute and bad-tempered in the best British tradition,’ turns his focus on the oft-photographed but little-written-about city of Benares, which should prove mighty interesting.
Don’t Ask Any Old Bloke for Directions
By P. G. Tenzing
A midlife crisis gets Tenzing on an Enfield Thunderbird covering 25,320 kilometres in an unplanned nine-month road trip. Karmic connections give the ‘old bloke’ a novel look on love, friendship, life and death. It also gives readers a one way ticket across India.
Leaving India: My Family’s Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents
By Minal Hajratwala
As the daughter of immigrants and the granddaughter of weavers, Minal Hajratwala grew up accustomed to crossing lines. In this groundbreaking work, she weaves together history, memoir, and reportage to muse on the immigrant condition.

In case you missed this, check out:
An Indian Odyssey
By Martin Buckley
The Ramayana-obsessed Buckley recreates an epic literary journey by air, land and sea. Leaving skid marks where Prince Rama left his footsteps; his passage across India is both perilous and rewarding. A layered, pensive narrative that marries travel and myth.

TOTAL RECALL

On The Screen

The road trip: Little Miss Sunshine
The Hoovers create havoc across the American Midwest, most of all among themselves.
The transformation: Junglee
Practically a secular pilgrimage for stuffy tycoon Shammi Kapoor, where he finds himself – and love – in heavenly old Kashmir.
Into the past: Everything Is Illuminated
Elijah Wood on a quest again, only this time he traces his family’s troubled past in the USSR instead of throwing jewellery into volcanoes.
The elopement: It Happened One Night, Dil Hai Ki Maanta Nahin
Adventures on the road in two classics, the Khan and Bhatt vehicle an adaptation of Gable and Colbert’s old-school rom-com.
Big city hustle: Midnight Cowboy
Heart-wrenching trip through New York’s demi-monde. Dustin Hoffman’s immortal ‘I’m walking here! I’m walking!’ shot sums up the big city experience for misfits.

From The Shelf, Into Your Tote

Don Quixote, Cervantes Burmese Days, George Orwell Hergé’s Tintin comics Moby Dick, Herman Melville Monkey, Wu Cheng’en The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, Douglas Adams Istanbul, Orhan Pamuk
The Gunny Sack, M.G. Vassanji In An Antique Land, Amitav Ghosh
Jejuri, Arun Kolatkar Sexing The Cherry and The Passion, Jeanette Winterson

On The Web

Read: popagandhi.com
Twenty-something Adrianna Tan writes dispatches on love, work, food and transition from all over the world.
Write to: dsplaced.tumblr.com
Immigrants post love letters to homes old and new on Jinal Shah and Manshi Trivedi’s storytelling experiment.

Watch: thebicyclist.tv
Conrad Miller gives himself sixty days to make great memories around America on a bicycle. Definitive Web TV, soon to be a movie.
Groove: wherethehellismatt.com
Matt dances in 125 countries; makes you smile like an idiot.

FOR TRANSCONTINENTAL WANDERINGS

Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Paul Simon
America’s greatest vagabonds teach us to travel light.
Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Hugh Masekela, and Amadou et Mariam
Africa opens its arms to the world through the incredible variety of languages, musical traditions and countries covered in their repertoire.
Paris Combo, Manu Chao and Radio Tarifa
If music could be hauled up for illegal immigration, these passportless, picaresque romps would be choked up in a European jail.
Seu Jorge, Yma Sumac and Astor Piazzolla
South American music is world music. Just the most distinctive of the sounds that vary literally every square mile.
Bushwhackers, Saltwater Band and Blek Bala Mujik
In Australia, the sounds of the native population mingle with the songs of the immigrant nation
The Silk Road Ensemble
What it says on the tin. Yo-Yo Ma and Tan Dun bring together folk artistes from Turkey to China in their sprawl across the map of Asia.
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, M.I.A. and the Guide soundtrack
Wherever you are on the subcontinent, freedom, love and funk speak the same language.

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