Soulless vessels of pure appetite, both ravaged and ravaging

These lines excerpted from a review in the New Yorker for a movie I'll likely never see - World War Z. Neither horror nor zombies nor end-of-the-world storylines do much for me but it not being my kind of fildoesn't mean I don't read about such movies...

...the hectic density of modern life; it stirs fears of plague and anarchy, and the feeling that everything is constantly accelerating. At times, it has the tone and the tempo of panic.

...

The undead really do keep on coming; they are taking over our bookstores, our movie theatres, our cable channels. Every neighborhood has a zombie or two. Are they what we fear we might become if we let ourselves go—soulless vessels of pure appetite, both ravaged and ravaging? Do they represent our apprehension of what hostility lies behind all those blank faces in the office, at the mall, across the dinner table? 

...


The zombies aren’t like us; they are us, just degraded a little. And what the zombie media splurge may unconsciously express is not just a fear that people might become hostile but a desire to be free of the crowd—to “decrease the surplus population.” Calling on Freud hasn’t been much in vogue in recent years, but asking for a consultation about the zombie obsession—why do we long for what terrifies us, doctor?—might not be a bad idea.

P.S. Shortly after reading the above review, I ran into this link in the NYT: The Zombie Apocalypse:

“I’ve never seen a zombie movie where someone drank from a puddle and died of explosive diarrhea.” 

This dude is talking about real zombies here, not the movie kind.

Believe him, most people in a zombie apocalypse would die not from zombie wounds or anything as sexy as that. They’d die, he explained, from the lack of a clean-water supply. And as anyone with even passing familiarity with his books “The Zombie Survival Guide” and “World War Z” knows, the biggest risk in a zombie invasion is fluid loss from all that running.

He has...

lectured at various army bases on zombie preparedness. He’s a zombie laureate, our nation’s lone zombie public intellectual, touring everywhere from Long Island to Ireland to Sugar Grove to prepare humans for the coming zombie plague.  

Whatever! I do not get the fascination with zombies, vampires, or ghosts! But maybe like Denby wrote, the zombie is us! 


P.P.S. And shortly thereafter, I see this in The Atlantic!

How and When Will the World End?

Giant meteors, an expanding sun, the retirement of Barbara Walters, and more

Really? Life is so uninteresting to people that they keep worrying about zombies and end of the world scenarios so much? Or is it that the movies have taken over our imagination to such an extent?


P.P.P.S. Ran across another review of the movie, this one from The Atlantic and not as raving as the earlier one in the New Yorker... but it also does mention that the appeal of Zombies & most post-apocalypse fiction  "is the underlying message that we deserve what we get".

And so it goes...

The State of the Cinema

Going ahead....  another recurring theme on this blog will be links to long-ish articles that I find online that I may read or send to my Kindle or bookmark for later reading. I -will, in most cases, provide it here with no further commentary - just the link and a short excerpt or two.

Long read for the today:

Steven Soderbergh: The State of the Cinema
The director confronts the economics of moviemaking, and whether there's hope for independent film:

"In 2003, 455 films were released. 275 of those were independent, 180 were studio films. Last year 677 films were released. So you’re not imagining things, there are a lot of movies that open every weekend. 549 of those were independent, 128 were studio films. So, a 100% increase in independent films, and a 28% drop in studio films, and yet, 10 years ago: Studio market share 69%, last year 76%. You’ve got fewer studio movies now taking up a bigger piece of the pie and you’ve got twice as many independent films scrambling for a smaller piece of the pie. That’s hard. That’s really hard."

w00t moot

Or if you are like me, you would say: what moot? who moot? why moot? Is this all a moot point? Give it the boot!

In a stunning result, the winner of the third annual TIME 100 poll and new owner of the title World's Most Influential Person is moot. The 21-year-old college student and founder of the online community 4chan.org, whose real name is Christopher Poole, received 16,794,368 votes and an average influence rating of 90 (out of a possible 100) to handily beat the likes of Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin and Oprah Winfrey. To put the magnitude of the upset in perspective, it's worth noting that everyone moot beat out actually has a job.

For all the "online" living (my ELife, I call it) I do, I never heard of moot or 4chan.org before I saw the Time list.

Here's more about moot:

Since moot launched 4chan.org in 2003, the site has given birth to Internet memes as diverse as Lolcats and Rickrolling. 4chan averages 13 million page views a day and 5.6 million visitors a month; by some estimates it is the second largest bulletin board in the world.

While reading the above, I noted this:

M.I.A. Makes the TIME 100 Producer, DJ, singer, fashion designer. Sri Lankan pop star M.I.A. has global influence across many genres. That put her on this year's TIME 100

I did not know M.I.A. was Sri Lankan!! I must be living under a rock!

If you ask me who is M. I. A.; then you're living under a bigger rock! ;) Her song, Paper Planes, was used in Slumdog Millionaire. Listen to it here on youtube.

Note: In my defense, I see now in the video that one can clearly tell that she has roots in the Indian subcontinent. But I had only heard the song on blip.fm and had not seen the video - so, had wrongly assumed it was some African American singer.

Music, The Universal Language

Watch this :) Awaara like you've never heard before.

Seems, Awaara and Raj Kapoor were famous not only in Russia, as I had previously known, but also in Turkey.

The chemistry between Nargis & Kapoor is so palpable. Makes me almost want to go see Awaara & Shree 420 again NOW! One of my best-ever romantic scenes in any movie is Nargis and Raj Kapoor under that umbrella in the rain in Shree 420. Pyaar ho jaayein! :)



Back to Turkey & Awara...

Inspired song this .... hear! Also, its remixed version.


Also this Turkish TV dance recital to Mukesh's voice!

And this dancing at a Turkish wedding to the Turkish version of the song! (The lady in turquoise blue is positively drunk or high! ;))

Seems they even remade the movie named "Avare", released in 1964 and *ing Sadri Alisik and Ajda Pekkan.

I gleaned all the above from a blog post by Quizman/Arun Simha. He's also posted about it at the rec.indian.music.misc newsgroup.

There's more fascinating comments in the IMDB entry for Raj Kapoor's 'Awaara'.

Excerpts:

==
1. When I was little, my grandmother often told me about a movie from her younger ages - Awaara /released as Bradyaga/. She was always telling me, that when it came to Bulgaria it was a total hit. People watched it more that 20 times! (especially the gypsies, who thought of Indian people as their ancestors). If I ask somebody, who is over 50year old about that film, I am sure, that he will remember it. And when the main actor - Raj Kapoor visited the country, thousands of people traveled to see him. My grandma, who was one of the best portrait photographers at that time and was asked to make his pictures with the leaders of the country, remembers that he and his wife never acted like international movie stars. They met with ordinary people, visited hospitals and orphanages. Why was that film so special? Especially in Bulgaria - a country on a Balcan peninsula with such a different culture from India? First of all, it was so different from the Soviet films that were broad-casted at that time. It was full of life, passion, love, music, and nevertheless - it was a social film - about the problems of the different classes. And it made a country so far away close. It was the first step for the good relationships between our two countries.

2. This movie is itself a legend. In 1988 TRT (Turkish national television) was to show that film. As I was a little child I could notnow about the movies but that day my mother, grandmother, my uncleswife all got together and prepared delicious foods, and watched thatmovie on TV. Perhabs on that day all women in Turkiye were watching that film.

Mavi Boncuk, a delicious movie has reference to this film. On that movie Munir Ozkul says: - Aaah Awaara (at the time he looks toAwaara's poster) I've grown my children by selling it's tickets, played for 6 months on those days.

It is a fact that Awaara was a great success, on those days a film was playing for only a week but Awaara was in vision for 6 great months.

Fascinating stuff. Music & the movies are indeed the universal lanugage.

P.S.  the lyrics in this song from Sangam is hilarious. I guess the lyrics translate karne bore hua Turkish translator ko :)

Prejudice always obscures the truth

Great scene from the aforementioned movie from 1957, Twelve Angry Men. (Along with the much-acclaimed 1962 movie To kill a mockingbird, this movie is a classic for all times!)



Quotable quote this!

It's always difficult to keep personal prejudice out of a thing like this. And wherever you run into it, prejudice always obscures the truth. I don't really know what the truth is. I don't suppose anybody will ever really know.

Hmm.. I think I need to see this movie again! 

Movies to see this year?

This one sounds promising..

Surveillance - Trailer
It’s been a hell of a day on the highway. When Federal Officers Elizabeth Anderson (Julia Ormond) and Sam Hallaway (Bill Pullman) arrive at Captain Billing’s office, they have three sets of stories to figure out and a string of vicious murders to consider. One zealot cop, a strung out junkie and an eight year old girl all sit in testimony to the roadside rampage, but as the Feds begin to expose the fragile little details each witness conceals so carefully with a well practiced lie, they soon discover that uncovering ‘the truth’ can come at a very big cost…

There was another such thriller movie which I had thought may be interesting (or total JT*) when I saw the trailer when I went to the theater to see Slumdog Millionaire. Something about evil bankers taking over the world.... which I think will go well in today's world where the US masses are outraged at bankers and bank executives.

* JT = jabardasti tension, a phrase my friend coined for movies that forcibly create tension in a movie where logically there should be none.

Aah...seems that movie is already out and it has gotten mediocre reviews!

The International *ing Naomi Watts and Clive Owen

Btw, couldn't remember the name of the movie and so googled and found this good site with list and trailers of upcoming movies -- Cinemarv.com

I see some other promising ones (based on brief synopsis given) at the site. Here are a few..

Will this be this year's Little Ms Sunshine kind of quirky feel-good movie? Or maybe something like that quirky and enjoyable 2003 Katie Holmes movie - Pieces of April.

Phoebe in Wonderland
A rebellious little girl clashes with the rule-obsessed authority figures in her life, and seeks enlightenment from her unconventional drama teacher.

Another feel-good movie ... I'll skip this one!

Everlasting Moments Trailer
Centers on Maria Larsson, a young, poor woman who in the early 20th century wins a camera at the lottery–an event that not only makes her see the world through new eyes but also changes her life.

This is a remake from Russia of the 1957 classic movie* -- Twelve Angry Men

12
In Twelve, one juror on a murder trial manages to convince his fellow colleagues that the case is not as clear cut as it might have seemed in the courtroom.

* 12 Angry Men has a 100% rating on the Tomatometer. Wow! The first 100% that I have seen on that site. Also it makes it to many Top Movies lists.

Btw, this movie was remade into a well-made (I thought; this video shows otherwise! Typical over-acting & melodrama.) Hindi movie Ek Ruka Hua Faisla *ing KKRaina etc which I saw in India on TV in late 80s.Btw, you can see the entire movie Ek Ruka Hua Faisla on Youtube.


A couple other interesting ones I perused...

Tokyo!

Triptych feature telling three separate tales set in Tokyo, Japan. “Shaking Tokyo” centers on a man who has lived for 10 years as a hikikomori, (a term used in Japan for people unable to adjust to society and so they never leave their homes) and what happens when he falls in love one day with a pizza delivery girl. “Interior Design” follows the story of a wannabe movie director who arrives in Tokyo with his girlfriend only to find that parts of her bones are turning into wood.

Must Read After My Death
Filmmaker Morgan Dews was very close to his grandmother Allis, but it wasn’t until after her death in 2001 that he became aware of an astounding archive she’d amassed throughout the 1960s. Filled with startlingly intimate and candid audio recordings detailing her family’s increasingly turbulent lives, the collection also contained hundreds of silent home movies, photographs and written journals. Using only these found materials, Dews has fashioned a searing family portrait that affords fly-on-the-wall access to one family’s struggles amid an America on the verge of dramatic transformation. Must Read After My Death follows Allis, her husband Charley and their four children in Hartford, Connecticut. Charley’s work takes him to Australia four months each year, so the couple purchases Dictaphone recorders as a way to stay in touch throughout Charlie’s extended absences. A modern woman at least a decade ahead of her time, Allis struggles against conformity –against the conventional roles of wife and mother. She finds the recordings cathartic and, with the family’s cooperation, incorporates them into their everyday existence. When the family turns to psychologists and psychiatrists, their strife increases and the recordings turn progressively darker — even desperate. All the while, Dews employs the family’s many home movies and the seemingly placid, typically American facade that they convey, as visual counterpoint to the raw and sobering tape recordings.

And yet another Holocast era film....such fodder the shenanigans of that bastard Hitler have provided for movie makers! Also book-writers!

Inglourious Basterds

In German-occupied France, Shosanna Dreyfus witnesses the execution of her family at the hand of Nazi Colonel Hans Landa. Shosanna narrowly escapes and flees to Paris, where she forges a new identity as the owner and operator of a cinema. Elsewhere in Europe, Lieutenant Aldo Raine organizes a group of Jewish soldiers to engage in targeted acts of retribution. Known to their enemy as “The Basterds,” Raine’s squad joins German actress and undercover agent Bridget Von Hammersmark on a mission to take down the leaders of The Third Reich. Fates converge under a cinema marquee, where Shosanna is poised to carry out a revenge plan of her own…

Enuf now... go along. See some movies. Or read books. :)

We are going somewhere but nobody is driving

Almost Real (2002)

Connecting in a Wired World

1 person + 1 Internet connection = endless possibilities

On March 15, 1985, the first domain name was purchased. Mark the occasion of this anniversary with Ann Shin's film about people who use the Internet to connect with like-minded souls in surprising ways…

Try like mad to cope with it

Quote of the day:

I was asked to act when I couldn't act. I was asked to sing "Funny Face" when I couldn't sing and dance with Fred Astaire when I couldn't dance - and do all kinds of things I wasn't prepared for. Then I tried like mad to cope with it. - Audrey Hepburn

Here she is, accepting the Oscars for best actress in 1951 for what is one of my wife's favorite movies - Roman Holiday. Such grace, such humility.

Contrast that with these recent expressions of fake over-animated joy of recent years! (Yes... Roberto Benigni went crazy at the Oscars too.. but that was at least entertaining and funny!)

Btw, speaking of emotion at the Oscar presentations, very few beat Charlie Chaplin's emotional and yet succinct speech when he (finally) received an Oscar (albeit an Honorary one) from the Academy.

Seeking the silver-screen lining

Last month, on an email group I am on, we had a discussion regarding whether there is a correlation between the recession and people having kids. Something more easily corroborated with data perhaps is the question - do people seek escapism and see more movies during a recession*? This data seems to suggest so...

In Downturn, Americans Seek Silver-Screen Lining

Hollywood could get used to this recession thing.While much of the economy is teetering between bust and bailout, the movie industry has been startled by a box-office surge that has little precedent in the modern era. Suddenly it seems as if everyone is going to the movies, with ticket sales this year up 17.5 percent, to $1.7 billion, according to Media by Numbers, a box-office tracking company.

And it is not just because ticket prices are higher. Attendance has also jumped, by nearly 16 percent. If that pace continues through the year, it would amount to the biggest box-office surge in at least two decades.

Phew...that explains my average of 2+ movies per week since 2007. I'm in a depression, of sorts! Actually, I do not think it is part of the above mentioned trend but I have seen more movies in the theater in February than I did in all of 2008 (and maybe even equal to 2007 and 2008 combined!). I have been to the theater twice in 2 weeks in February - to see Slumdog Millionaire and then Delhi-6. But this weekend, I'm just watching movies at home, as is the case usually. Saw City Lights (Charlie Chaplin) yesterday and today I'm going to watch 2046, which I have longed to watch for a long time -- ever since I saw and enjoyed Wong Kar Wai's In the Mood for Love, one of my favorite movies of all times!

Still waters run deep

I did not know there was a real man recently in the news who had the same ailment that Aamir had in the recent Hindi movie, Ghajini, until I read this NYT book review of The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa.

Last December the death of a man named Henry Gustav Molaison made headlines in The New York Times and around the world. He was famous in scientific circles for not being able to remember anything new longer than 15 minutes, due to an accident. He had spent the later part of his life in a Connecticut nursing home being a subject known only as H. M. in psychology experiments.

A similar malady, but a more humane fate, has befallen the “professor” in this deceptively elegant novel, which was a best seller and a movie in Japan. A car accident has robbed him of the ability to remember any new memories for more than 80 minutes. For him time stopped in 1975, when he was a prominent math teacher and the famed pitcher Yutaka Enatsu was mowing down batters for the Hanshin Tigers. He lives in a ramshackle cottage in his sister-in-law’s backyard, doing math puzzles and walking around with reminder notes stuck to his suit, the most prominent of which says, “My memory only lasts 80 minutes.”

..

This is one of those books written in such lucid, unpretentious language that reading it is like looking into a deep pool of clear water.But even in the clearest waters can lurk currents you don’t see until you are in them.  

Life is like that...no? The mind harks back to that old phrase/idiom: Still waters run deep...but I think its been rendered even more powerful here by the image of a "clear" pool of water running deep and fraught with ominous currents that you don't quite recognize until you are caught and swept away by them.

And so it goes...

P.S. Btw, the movie, Ghajini, was apparently loosely based on (aka "inspired by") the acclaimed and well-made English movie, Memento.  Though I have not seen the movie, I believe it had many script loop-holes and was not well-executed. However, I should add that Aamir's acting and commitment to playing the character in the movie has more or less been universarlly praised.

Jai Ho!

"Slumdog Millionaire," the movie about a poverty-raised teaboy who goes on a game show as a way to find his lost love, takes home the best picture award and leads all films Sunday with eight Oscars at the 81st annual Academy Awards. 

Slumdog Millionaire wins 8 out of 9 possible Oscars. 2 Oscars for A. R. Rahman. A first Oscar for a Spanish actress. An Oscar for Kate. (Finally!). RIP, Heath. (Such a loss!)

Yeaah! What a Night!! [List of winners can be seen here.]

Bollywood songs

Considering my roots, it is strange that I hardly ever post music from India. So, here's some fare from Bollywood ... but not the blockbuster song-and-dance routines of recent years (mostly item numbers of late!) but songs from the 1950s, which I absolutely love more than any other period in Bollywood's history.

First up... Nutan and Dev Anand in a famous song from Paying Guest



And is there someone with a more beautiful screen presence than Madhubala in Indian films? Again, with Dev Anand (whose films from the 50s I love; though he's made nothing but c**p since; a few ok movies in the 60s and 70s notwithstanding! At 85, though, he has the kind of energy and enthusiasm for life that one wants to still root for him to continue making movies (that not many see; and its been so for almost 3 decades at least now!)



And the last one is actually from Pakistan, which I found it here. The picturization is not so great but the voice, that of Naseem Begum, is haunting in some ways and I loved it.



P.S. Given that a friend recently emailed me saying she remembered I used to love a particular S. D. Burman song, I should at least provide links to a few songs sung by him here; considering I have no idea when I will post Bollywood fare again!

Kaahe Ko Roye
o re mahji
wahan kaun hai tera musafir jaye ga kahan

Apparently, it was the 3rd in the above list that was my favorite! However, I have no recollection of being so much in love with this song back in the 90s when I knew this friend but memory is such a beast. We remember different things about each other and sometimes about ourselves!

Beyond Good and Evil

Finally saw Dark Knight.

Much has been said about the movie probably and so I will avoid the temptation to say more here; I don't do movie or book reviews well anyways! But I just wanted to share some thoughts I had this evening after seeing the movie.

For one minute, forget that the Joker is evil. Who then would you root for -- the poseur who hides behind his mask or the WYSIWYG guy?

To me, the movie through the Joker character attempts to shred apart the shams humans hide under and tries to expose the motivations that drive human enterprise.

Also, I am not sure if the millions of Americans who went to see the movie saw beyond the action and saw it as a criticism of the post 9-11 world we live here.

We live in a world when sometimes it is not clear who is right or wrong and sometimes one can become the other (Dent, in this case) going through an extra-ordinary about-face (*shudder*... forget Heath's makeup. That was quite a make up on Eckhart in the last part of the movie!). The bad guy strikes and takes his loved one and the paragon of fighting evil in Gotham suddenly loses it... blames all and sundry and then himself falls prey to the evil in him. In some ways, the movie is supposed to make you look within yourself and realize that at some level, maybe we are all two-faced...though not in the exaggerated villainous comic-book/movie sort of way. I was reminded of Nietzsche* with the dialog, repeated a few times in the movie: “You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

In the end, sometimes though the good guy (Batman) may get the crazy terrorist (they even threw in the T word to describe the Joker's shenanigans, didn't they!) but at what cost? Your own soul has been corrupted in the process and your knight-in-shining-armor (Dent) has been rendered into a 'terrorist'.

The Nolan brothers tried to make this point with the whole two ships scene at the end too; though I think that scene (and whole last 1/3 of the movie) was a tad bit over done. Also, I found the whole ambivalence shown by the Morgan Freeman character about using surveillance to track the terrorists amongst us to be too preachy. (Ok..we'll use it this one time and then destroy it! What a cop-out!).

Anyways... I am sure all this has been said in the many reviews and hoopla following the movie -- but I am glad I saw the movie and went in without knowing what to expect.

Btw, I agree with most that it was an amazing performance by Heath, though the make-up helped! Wouldn't say it is one of the best acting performances I have ever seen but he's done a good job and given the emotional drive behind awarding the guy posthumously and the effort Warner Brothers is putting behind the movie for the Oscars, I think he's a shoo-in for the Oscar. I'd be surprised if he does not win; let alone be nominated, which he is almost 100% assured of at this point in time.

--
* He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. - Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.

RIP, Paul Newman

Blue eyes passed away at age 83 yesterday.

Women everywhere swooned* when they saw him but to me 3 words come to mind when I think of him (in addition to handsome, of course) are Dignity, Grace, and Charm. It is not without reason that the late film critic Pauline Kael wrote: "His likableness is infectious; nobody should ever be asked not to like Paul Newman."

Thoughts are with his wife of 50 years (such a rarity in Hollywood!), Jeanne Woodward today. Has to be a tough time for her.

The only movie of his that I recall seeing though is Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid (3 famous clips from the movie below.)







Need to watch some of the other hits like: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with Liz Taylor, the Hustler, and of course THE movie which I always think of first when I hear his name - Cool Hand Luke; and of course many of his other hit movies like Color of Money, Sting, Hud, too!

Too many good movies yet to watch, too many good books yet to read...too little time; or rather lots of time that I waste doing useless things like creating new blogs and such!

Also, I just realized that just this month Vanity Fair had a great article about Newman, along with some great photos. - loved the ones with his wife, esp. the one where he's dancing with his wife.

Whether Paul Newman was playing the villain or the hero, Americans were smitten with his rugged good looks, his wry wit, and those blue, blue eyes.

..

Movie star Paul Newman has quietly turned over the entire value of his ownership in Newman’s Own—the company that makes salad dressings and cookies—to charity. Completed over a two-year period in 2005 and 2006, the amount of his donations to Newman’s Own Foundation Inc. comes to an astounding $120 million. This is unprecedented for any movie star or anyone from what we call Hollywood. Of course, Newman and actress wife Joanne Woodward have never been Hollywood types.—Fox News, June 11, 2008.

Did I say generous before? Charming, graceful, dignified, cool, handsome, AND generous. The world, like his friend Robert Redford said today, is a better place because he passed by. RIP, Paul. If heaven exists, you're in good company.

* There are probably many great pictures of Paul Newman but I loved the picture of him with Louis Armstrong at this link. Also, some great pictures at the IMDB site and some links to film clips through the Guardian.

It's a dog's world, alright!

Via Metafilter, I just read about a series on IFC which looks interesting.

Wilfred is a hit cult series from Australia. IFC.com is the first to air this demented little gem in North America. Come by for your fix every weekday at 4:20 ET starting May 5th – 40 short episodes in all.

Or you can see it all for free online; each episode seems to be less than 10 minutes.

More details:

If modern life has taught us anything, it’s that the domestic pet can have as many psychological hang-ups as its contemporary owner. Depression, anxiety, loneliness and fear of abandonment all lead to behavioral problems and an unstable home environment. Wilfred, the series, an in-depth portrait of such a pet “behaving badly”, features an owner, her new suitor and one not-so-happy talking, pot-smoking dog.

Wilfred the dog is the ultimate flawed character. Like David Brent in “The Office,” we are charmed by his arrogance and self-righteousness, his falsehoods and misguided passions. Insecure and manipulative, he will stop at nothing to win the love and affection he desires. Although his methods may sometimes be underhand, his innocence and purity of heart can never be questioned. Or can it?

Adam is your boy next door. He causes no trouble and trouble rarely comes his way. When Adam hooks-up with Sarah, he thinks all his Christmases have come at once.

Sarah is the ultimate package: attractive, intelligent, and with her own place. It all seems too good to be true… it is.

Sarah, like any modern single parent, is trying to create a stable life for herself and her “special little man”. Sarah has a long list of failed relationships, which have left her and Wilfred jaded. Neither want to see the other hurt again and Adam has walked into an emotional mine field. So how hard can it be to make friends with a dog? That depends on the situation… and the dog.

Told you....It's a dog's world, alright! [Previous posts on the subject of Dogs.]

Down the Rabbit Hole

Love this picture!

A storage shelf for characters -- currently holding Coraline's Mummy and Daddy? © David Strick

It's from the set of a movie, Coraline to be released early next year. More pictures from the set are at the LA Times website. Coraline is based on a book by famed graphic novelist, Neil Gaiman, with the title character voiced in the movie by Dakota Fanning.

It seems,

Behind the anonymous walls of a Hillsboro warehouse, dozens of filmmakers labor quietly on the offbeat project that will turn sneaker mogul Phil Knight into a moviemaker.

Animators hunch over tiny dolls on dimly lit sets, manipulating figures frame-by-frame for the camera. A full day's work produces no more than a few seconds of footage.

More than 300 crew members have worked on the film since March of last year, crafting a movie called "Coraline" in painstaking "stop-motion.

Phil Knight of Nike fame is getting into movies, huh! Maybe the tag-line goes from "Just Do It" to "Just See it"? (Sorry... that was bad!)

Btw, if you haven't read Gaiman's work (I haven't), please don't rush to see the movie with your kids. Its not a childrens movie.

Rather, it's a spooky, through-the-looking-glass tale of a lonely tweener girl who moves to Ashland and steps into a mirror world where sinister impostors stand in for her parents.

...

There's something really raw about the film, too.

Laika has toned down some of the book's scarier episodes for film, but a 20-minute preview still provided plenty of creepy moments. The spunky Coraline crawls through a womblike space to reach the home of her "other parents"; the scenery outside the house is gray, foggy and foreboding; and the "other mother," with buttons for eyes, starts to show some less-than-maternal qualities.

I'll leave you with a recent interview with Gaiman.

Quick Gun Murugan

This parody/satire movie looks like worth a watch. Should be some good laughs :)



(Link found in via an email from Rahul Bhatia.)

Rajnikanth has inspired such great things in Indian cinema. ...from teaching us a smoking styles to how to get snakes out of their abodes or how to send villans flying... :)

The Bold and the Beautiful, Indian style

There's Draupadi and then there is Paanchaali! :) Actors must be lining up like crazy to get the Duryodhan part!*

The latter picture is from a sitcom on Indian TV. (Hat tip to Nikhil Mehra, who brought attention to it on a mailing list we happen to be on.) It seems Ekkkkkkta K.k.k.k.kapoor has gotten into the act lately (after the melodrama of saas-bahu soaps) into soaping up the epics! Read this review by Jai Arjun to get a plot gist of the first episode - I have not read it myself yet but I will; he writes great film and book reviews. It seems there also is a competitive show called Draupadi on Sahara One. Once again, everyone wants to do an Ekta and she's started a new trend -- seems "Jai Shri Krishna at 8:30, Mahabharata at 9 and Ramayan at 9:30" is standard fare in many Indian households now. What! No more saas-bahu serials? :) For great satire and humor, read Jai Arjun's post about Ekta's serial from when the show was announced but had not yet started.

All this reminds me of a time about 15+ years back, when in great adolescent glee, my room-mate and I concocted the sleazy version of the Mahabharata! And no drinks were even involved! Actually, one does not need alcohol induced inspiration or much imagination to 'sleazify' the story -- premarital sex (Kunti), extra-marital sex with sadhus (poor Pandu!), orgies (men with multiple wives and a wife with multiple husbands) -- inherently the Mahabharata has much fodder for such frolic and fun! :)

Also, here is something I just read that I bet you did not know. You know that she's called Draupadi because she's King Drupad's daughter and Paanchali because she is the daughter of the king of Paanchaala (not because she has paanch (5) hubbies.) But those names are what they call a denonym, it seems! Her real first name, which most people do not know, is Krishnā!! Yes... same name as some guy who later saves her ijjat at the end of the above scene, if I remember my Mahabharat correctly! :)

With that nugget of trivia, let me go and read Jai Arjun's take on this! Knowing me and knowing his writing, I am sure that will be far more erudite and enlightening than this post has been.

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Ok.. I am back after reading Jai Arjun's 2 posts - the review of Ekta's Mahabharat as well as the other post about the Sahara show.

The review itself has many great parts, like this excerpt:

Shakuni giggles continually and resembles Dr Evil in the Austin Powers films, Duryodhana has impressive breasts and there is unintentional phallic imagery in the worm’s eye shots of Bhima’s mace limping impotently between his legs.

... but you go read it in its entirety. There is much more mirth at the post including an appearance by Donkey from Shrek, suggestions for Deewar-style tattoos on Mahabharat characters bodies, and God (Krishna) using Google Earth to find his way to earth. :)

The latter post was also interesting as the sitcom apparently has a slightly different take on the Mahabharat, dvelving into the mundane dailyness of life rather than going from one dramatic scene to another. Again, go read it at the post for details. Butthe reason to highlight it here is that because through that post and the comments therein, I learned of one angle my ex-roomie and I had missed - the romance of Kunti and Karna. Actually, it seems this is not something the directors made up. It seems it has repeatedly come up in many folktales and regional literature. Hmm... the possibilities for human adventure in the Mahabharat are endless!

The talking point was that the visiting Karna has just sent Draupadi a bouquet of yellow roses, which she is known to have a preference for. What could this mean?....

And the comment:

Have you read "The Palace of Illusions" by Chitra Bannerjee Divakaruni? It draws a very human portrayal of Draupadi and is beautifully, albeit commercially written. I wonder if this series is a take on the book? A recurring theme of the novel is the unrequited love between Draupadi and Karna. Definitely an interesting theme for day soap types.

Lots of other good comments at the post about literary re-tellings of the Mahabharata in local folklore and literature, if you are interested. Btw, Jai Arjun has also read that book by Divakaruni and has even reviewed it!

Also, if this sounds irreverent... so be it! Wait till I start with the Ramayana! I bet such a novel will create the rabid VHP types to come out of the woodworks and riot -- though I fear such a novel will never be published in the Land of Ram since publishers will lose their moral gumption to publish something they fear will create controversy and engender rioting. And this brings me to a WSJ op-ed piece today (Hat tip to Salil Tripathi) about Random House's decision to postpone publication of a novel about Mohammad's wife. But that is a whole other topic about religious hypocrisy and I will not go there now, except to point you to another good book review by Jai Arjun where he talks about "the spirit of iconoclasm and irreverence in medieval Islamic literature, which is something that doesn’t get much press nowadays."

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* Ok.. ok... I know...it was Dushasana, not Duryodhana. I need to refresh my Mahabharat. Gotta go dig out Rajagopalachari's Mahabharata (pdf available online!), which I read in 9th grade and fell in love with the English language, seduced by all the similie-laden language more than the story itself.

The fantastic in ourselves

Perhaps this is why I enjoy movies?

We're always somebody in the movies before we become that somebody in real life. We see a part of ourselves reflected in the boldest films; we seize on it and allow it to inhabit us. That's why, even in a season composed almost entirely of overstuffed blockbusters, we hold out hope for the movie that will touch the fantastic in ourselves.

Excerpt is from Three Books About Our Affair with Movies on NPR.

Jodha Akbar

No... not the recent movie by Ashutosh Gowarikar but a short story by Salman Rushdie (published in the New Yorker recently).

Although I have merely seen trailers of the movie and so far have read only the first paragraph* of the story and although I have immense appreciation for the amount of work that goes into making a visual spectacle of a movie like the one made by Gowarikar, I would rather indulge and luxuriate in this orgy of seductive words than be seduced by the visual feast of Aishwarya Rai and Hrithik Roshan on the silver screen. That said, in the last decade or more, Rushdie's recent novels have left me horribly unsatisfied.

* At dawn the haunting sandstone palaces of the new “victory city” of Akbar the Great looked as if they were made of red smoke. Most cities start giving the impression of being eternal almost as soon as they are born, but Sikri would always look like a mirage. As the sun rose to its zenith, the great bludgeon of the day’s heat pounded the flagstones, deafening human ears to all sounds, making the air quiver like a frightened blackbuck, and weakening the border between sanity and delirium, between what was fanciful and what was real.