Tag: Entertainment

look behind you, a three-headed monkey!

Just back from seeing the entertaining, exciting and utterly soulless 150 minute trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End, otherwise known as Dead Man’s Chest.

Yeah.

I really, really loved the first Pirates. It was like The Secret of Monkey Island only on the big screen, with one heck of a great central character in the form of Jack Sparrow, an epic scope and a wonderfully paced, dense storyline with real chills and spills. Pirates the Second has all that, and more: Jack’s back, the Monkey Island references are back (nobody tell Ron Gilbert, okay?), the plot just goes all over the place and is filled with thrilling action sequence after action sequence… except… except…

Well, it doesn’t really go anywhere. The entire movie is a collossal set up for the third, so while it is very entertaining and you’ll be grinning throughout, I for one can’t fairly judge it as being either good or bad without having seen the next one!

This unsatisfactory conclusion, of course, leads one to examine what is there in Dead Man’s Chest even more, and you soon begin to realise that Jack Sparrow has been reduced to a clown (note to writers/director/producer: we didn’t love him because he was quirky, we loved him because he was quirky and real), the villains are quite boring, every joke in the previous one has been given a dusting-off and a groan-inducing twist, and there just isn’t an engaging story to put it all together.

My favourite part of Pirates — heck, any pirate movie — would have to be the sense of adventure, the journey, the beautiful way in which it was portrayed that, hey, you know, these guys are on these ships and they have to sail them to far away places. In Dead Man’s Chest all of this is done away with (despite a two-and-a-half hour running time) and characters just show up at the next place they have to mess around with, most of which are done in CG. Doing so makes the entire thing seem fake. In Cure of the Black Pearl there was a minimal use of CG except for when they really needed it, and so the lush, natural beauty of the caribbean was brought out.

Not so in the sequel, which if anything suffers from an overdose of computer generated imagery. ILM is the best in the business. There’s no doubt about it. The latest WETA project looks like a TV movie from the 70s compared to their work. There’s a lot of good CG stuff here. If I was to look at any one of Davy Jones’s crewmen rendered seperately, if I got to see the wire mesh that made them up or the rigging or the texture maps while browsing the forums at CGTalk, then I’d be blown away. On the big screen, as a storytelling device, it just looks like a cluttered mess. There’s too much visual information. There are too many dangly bits and popping barnacles and coral things that the eye has no idea where to actually look, and so just ends up picking some part of the background to look at while the dialogue runs though.

As a scientific example of what is possible in today’s CG, it’s award worthy. As art direction, it’s a fiasco.

The cinematography, slave now to the CG gods, similarly takes a turn for the monochromatic. Gone is Curse of the Black Pearl’s multicoloured tropical chaos. Say hello to every shade of green and gloom that was left over from The Ring.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still worth the watch. The action sequences are marvellous. Some of the lines are snappy. Depp is great with the little work he has in this film, and Bloom shows shades of his good work in Kingdom of Heaven towards the climax, but Keira Knightley isn’t convincing (there’s this tired attempt at a love triangle that I hope goes away quickly), the plot never has the kind of weight and propulsion it needs to genuinely seem interesting. By the end of the movie you’re just getting revved up for things to get going, and they throw a cliffhanger at you that is anticlimactic because you weren’t that involed to begin with.

The best thing I can say about Dead Man’s Chest is that it tries very hard to break out of the mould set by the first film, and in that it succeeds fully.

The worst thing I can say is that it really hits home the fact that it was written by the same people as Shrek.

the seven spigots of interwubbing

I was somewhat skeptical when the alarmists started crowing about India banning major blog sites, and I was right — turns out it wasn’t a case of boneheadedness on the government’s part (this time), but on the ISPs’. Isn’t it fantastic that supposedly world-class companies like Tata and Reliance can’t block individual blogs, so have to get the whole domain?

If you, like me, can’t wait to see Casino Royale, then then this might tide you over until then (via Cinematical). Since I wasn’t interested to begin with, I had no problem looking at the trailer, and have come away generally impressed. Maybe worth a rental or even a visit to the cinema if the buzz is good. I’ve never read the books they’re based on, but it looks more like Bond and less like Banks, which is always a good thing. Alicia Silverstone’s squeaky sidekickiness notwithstanding (what happened to this girl?), it plays out well and doesn’t seem dumbed down despite the 14-year-old protagonist. The trailer is cut like most Amercian hold-your-hand affairs (complete with condescending movie-voice introductions), but with a cast full of cool people (Ewan McGregor, Robbie Coltrane, Bill Nighy) and scene-chewing Mickey Rourke as the villain, it’s probably not going to suck.
(note: trailer’s in English, but the site’s in German. Click on the “Stor” button)

OH. MY. FREAKING. THIRTY-THREE. MILLION. GODS. I’ve probably never mentioned this before, but Wes Anderson is one of my absolute favourite filmmakers, and the thought of him and Wilson teaming up again (Noah Baumbach and Anderson did The Life Aquatic), and then going to India — well, that’s it. This is officially the movie I’m most looking forward to in the entire world.

On a related note, have you seen this awesome Wes Anderson American Express ad?

Retro Gaming Symbology is finally coming of age. I wonder what kind of stuff will we be seeing twenty years from now, coming from kids who have grown up on Pokemon and Halo?

More retro-gaming inspired art.

Upon viewing this item I was reminded of the fact that motorcycles and cars are descendents of horses and carriages respectively, and that this, um, vehicle wouldn’t be a bad off-road, deep-jungle ride, if given the proper styling (make it more like a 599 GTB Fiorano, less like a Chinese Take-out box), a roll-cage (which is my main problem with quad-bikes — just because they’re descended from horses doesn’t mean you can’t change something — it’s called progress, you know) and some wheels for highway motion.

Real dogs vs. Nintendogs :
Real Dogs – 1, Nintendogs – 0

Finally, a USB hub that goes along with the rest of my crap!

the six shrines of interwubbing

The pilot episode of the animated version of The Amazing Screw-On Head is here. Watch. Now. NOW!

The poster for The Fountain looks good. In this day and age, we really should be getting more medium budget science fiction and fantasy films like we did in the 70s and 80s. Confession: I have never seen a Darren Aronofsky film. Anyone?

And here’s the impressive poster to Crank, which I’m surprised to say I’m looking forward to a lot (well, mostly because Jason Statham has so far never failed to deliver in an action movie).

Some of you may know that the Standard Operating Procedure for me regarding movies I actually want to see is that I try to stay as far away from all trailers as I can. American movie trailers suck. They give away everything. Most aren’t crafted with any verve or style, and they have a knack for making brilliant films look like crap, and vice-versa. I may watch 30 second teasers, I may drool over posters, but unless it’s going on in the theatre right before the movie starts, I stay away from all trailers. However, if you want to see the trailer for Magic Batman Vs. Magic Wolverine, go here. Apparently it’s very good.

Mazda is using some mighty special stuff to make their cars these days.

Yet another example of the urban Indian’s need to have all their shit noticed and hence validated by the White Guys.

Coming Soon: the Atkins DVD-R. 50TB? Is there anything but porn in that quantity?

Remember Boring Boeing? Sort of still there, but now with totally pimpin’ wings.

The Bodyflik. Because for every thing you can otherwise just do with your own hand, there must be a plastic tool.

In these days of tilting, twisting, vibrating analog motion-sensing wands, nothing elicits more lust than a well-crafted digital pad.

Of course, this thing elicits lust of a different kind (no, not that kind!!)

Brolly lights. I think I preferred the ones in Blade Runner.

Somehow the fact that right now there are fifty-three memory card formats out there and a reader for them doesn’t even faze me as much as it should.

This reminds me a lot of that Monty Python sketch from Michael Ellis.

In order to cut down on electricity consumption, the UK is outlawing standby modes. Hmm, I wonder how this ruling will affect those new ‘instant on’ computers that essentially use standby modes?

Not quite Sharks With Frikkin Lazers, Man! — but it’ll do for now. Anybody else somewhat nostaligic about the 80s G.I. Joe/M.A.S.K. style design and painted implementation of the graphic (compared to today’s 3D and photoshop monstrosities)?

I never really got into playing videogames so much as to require this place, but recalling how generally obsessed I was with the industry and game design in general back in my teens, I can understand why it exists. Also, I’m thankful that my motor senses aren’t so finely honed that I would consider playing and beating Halo on Legendary difficulty in one sitting, and that I now relegate myself to playing an hour of Final Fantasy X every other day. Of course, even if I did have the necessary motor skills, I wouldn’t really want to torture msyelf by playing through the design travesty that is Halo. Once — with cheats and trainers — was bad enough, thank you.

Team Fortress 2. Other than the fact that this game has been in development forever, finally, Finally, FINALLY someone breaks out of the gunmetal grey, uncanny valley to bring us an FPS with some really interesting graphics. The No One Lives Forever series is one of my favourites but still tries to have realistic character models, and while TimeSplitters was halfway there, and Painkiller was good but still not crazy enough, this is more of what I’d like to see in the uber-serious world of First Person Shooters. Good stuff.

And finally:
Speaking of the FPS genre, it is already rife with sexual symbology what with the constant representation of large disembodied guns waving around the screen, but this just takes it to a whole new level. (somewhat NSFW)

the third coming of interwubbing

Apparently Vin Diesel is not going to be Silver Surfer. That’s a relief. I have nothing against Diesel — I’m one of the few who actually liked The Chronicles of Riddick — but he was just the wrong choice. Look, just because someone is bald and has muscles doesn’t mean they’re a shoo-in for Silver Surfer. I imagine that a hyper-intelligent intergalactic herald of a planet-swallowing dude should be played more like Sonny from I, Robot (that was done by our beloved Alan Tudyk, y’know, and was the highlight of an overall enjoyable film).

In the same article they mention that Eric Bana won’t be coming back for the new sequel/remake of The (INCREDIBLE) Hulk (Sometimes referred to by the cool name Hulk Smash!). Bana is a good actor, but is not the best firt for the Hulk character, either in the first Ang Lee movie, or any more comic-like re-imagining (Eric Bana was the only thing worth watching in Troy, and I was quite interested to see him as James Bond, even though of all the hopefuls Daniel Craig was and is my favourite — have you seen Layer Cake?).

Perhaps it is time to go the Routh/Jackman route and get an unknown? Or, better yet, get Bryan Singer to cast any and all superhero movie characters. He has only made one bad decision (Halle Berry as Storm, but then, Halle Berry as Catwoman or Halle Berry as Bond–um–Person didn’t work out well either), and the rest of his choices have seemed daft to begin with but worked out fantastic in the end (McKellan as Magneto instead of, say, someone like Rutger Hauer).

Remember what I said about Betley SUVs? I was right.

While this mockup is very pretty indeed (and in a decade or so when self-lighting plastic displays will come in, it will be feasable for the mass market), it looks far too good to be a Mac. Sorry folks, they may be generally well designed, but they’re always completely boring to look at.

On the PC end of the spectrum, there is this. Hang on, wasn’t this what Plug & Play was supposed to be? I like the form factor, and as long as the thing runs alright I wouldn’t have a problem with such modular designs, but seeing that early GeForce FX cards required two AGP slots (and Dual Card SLI interfaces are the current hot thing) how long would it be before such a rigid system would be outdated purely because the volume and cooling requirements of the chips would not be met by the form-factor?

And finally…
Erm. Right. There’s so much Freudian stuff one can read into that one.

the death of inspiration

Fabian Bielinsky, the director of Nine Queens, has died. If you’ve never seen it, Nine Queens is a taut, gripping Argentinian movie about the machinations of low and high level confidence rackets told in a the span of a single day. The title comes from a the film’s principal job, the sale of nine very rare stamps by the film’s protagonists, one a seasoned veteran, and the other an up-and-comer who is begrudingly being tutored for the day by the vet.

If this sounds a little like the plot from Bluffmaster, you’re right. However, Bluffmaster is not a direct copy of the story. To say any more would spoil both movies, but I can imagine that Rohan Sippy saw Fabian Bielinsky’s film and wondered if and how it would be possible to make a plot like that work in an Indian film — and he succeeded admirably. Bluffmaster and Nine Queens share one scene, but the rest of the plot, characters, events and motivations are markedly different (therefore putting that one shared scene firmly into ‘homage’ territory, not a shot-for-shot ‘inspired’ movie).

I like to think of them as companion movies. Watch both. If you’ve seen neither, watch Nine Queens first. Nine Queens itself was officially remade into an American movie, Criminal* (which I haven’t seen, but by all accounts it’s okay).

(* No relation to Mahesh Bhatt’s Criminal, which was in fact a bizarre copy of The Fugitive, except that Tommy Lee Jones’s character was played by a woman cop in love with the hero)

A similar style of ‘remake’ — if one may call it that — occured between one of my favourite Korean movies (and indeed, one of Korea’s favourite Korean movies), My Sassy Girl, and last year’s Neal’n’Nikki. Again, the two share one scene and a somewhat similar plot structure, but diverge completely from there (and at the end of N&N, the plot even does a twist that seemingly was designed to surprise people who had already seen the Korean film.

I must say, I have absolutely no problem with this kind of ‘remake’ — half the stories I think up are in response to something I’ve seen or read. Sometimes you come out of a movie and say, “Well, if I were to make it…” and go on from there (Star Wars is apparently a copy of  Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress — damned if I care). Reaction to stimulus — any stimulus, be it from real life or from an existing work of fiction — is the root of much of creativity.

What I don’t like, however, is laziness. I don’t like shot for shot remakes of movies that their irritating directors pass off with shrugs of “there is no such thing as an original story” — Look, it’s actually a little painful to see a set of well-written, dare I say ‘original’ set of characters parading around the plot of The Usual Suspects (for a better take on The Usual Suspects‘s classic twist, it pops up in Anubhav Sinha’s Dus) or a director wasting good actors in her personal fantasy of making Dirty Dancing (and then doing it badly). You’re halfway there, why not go for it and do it right?

interwubbing 001

I figure I end up mindlessly reading newsfeeds anyway, so I might as well inflict some of the pain on my delightful reader(s).

Self Heating Dinners
Years from now, depressed and lonely bachelors everywhere will snuggle up to their warm, inviting curry-flavoured pillows.

This looks nice. I read a review, and it is refreshingly neither some kind of awkward Magic-a-la-Hollywood movie (it’s called The Illusionist, nor Edward Norton Does Shrek). Plus it has Jessica Biel in it, so I’m sold.

Edward Norton does Shrek. eeeew.

Wow. Zhang Yimou and Chow Yun Fat. Unfortunately, judging by how both Hero and House of Flying Daggers were handled, I’ll probably get to see this on DVD long before the theatrical release in these parts around 2012 (which will be an English dub anyway, so what’s the use?)

I get all hot under the collar about Ron Howard making a Straczynski-penned movie called The Changeling (a Garfield Logan movie! Woohoo! Sign up Adrian Grenier!), and then it turns out to be some kind of cheap little grey-toned thriller that will no doubt waste Nicole Kidman/Charlize Theron/Diane Lane (or other 35 actresses who have won/been nominated for an award) in a sleepy, underdeveloped character with the latest iteration of the Haley Joel Osment meme playing the creepy Son/NotSon. No doubt, with JMS writing, it will turn out that NotSon is the emissary of an ancient alien race who goes around seeding planets with their cosmic bingo-bongo.

I ask you, Ron Howard, isn’t it so much easier to round up a bunch of animals and turn them green in post? You’re the guy who made Splash, for Mary Mags’s sake!

Somewhere, deep down, JK Rowling just loves to watch fanpersons convulse.

Price of car and pedigree of brand are directly proportional to ugliness of resulting vehicle (and make no mistake, while this is a mockup, the eventual one will be a total eyesore. Hell, I remember seeing Cayenne mockups that looked
nice once). In other news, BMW X3, still no, no, no.

But, just to prove that there is an exception to every rule…
BTW, saw one of these, brand new, red and black, on the back of a shipping truck making its way from the airport. I hope and pray that the owner doesn’t wreck it before I get to see it drive by (3 out of 4 of the local Porsche Carrera GTs, including the black one I saw once, are now sadly in the scrap heap).

I love it. Does it have cupholders?

Love it more. Does it have a DAP dock?

Who’s yer daddy?

The Nigerian Carving Industry is more developed than I thought.

James Bond tech, when processed for production in the real world, always ends up looking like something from the Boys 6-12 aisle of the Toy Store.

A Bruce Lee Musical. Can’t be worse than Dragon.

And finally.

…I can’t wait for the pr0n version.

see no evil, hear no evil

V for Vendetta finally released over here this week (but only in one multiplex chain, for no apparent reason). I’m going to watch it today with friends, but last evening we suddenly felt the need to watch a Hindi movie, and with only two choices in theatres here (the other being Humko Deewana Kar Gaye) we chose Pyare Mohan.

Now, I wasn’t too fond of Indra Kumar’s last film, Masti (which Vivek Oberoi described as “A sex comedy without sex” and that should be enough to tell you how lame it was), so despite the cast being the who’s who of underappreciated young Bollywood today (what exactly does Fardeen Khan have to do to get a hit?), I was wary. On the other hand, Indra Kumar also directed Ishq, which was hilarious, so maybe Pyare Mohan would be more like that.

I’m very happy to say that it is. Pyare Mohan is genuinely funny and frequently thrilling, there’s not a groan-inducing double entendre in sight, and it’s a pure distillation of the masala movie dynamic but with a postmodern, slick makeover. The majority of what makes the film work are the two portagonists. In what seems like an eternity, a normal masala movie actually has believable characters as the heroes rather than cardboard cut-out alpha males. Pyare and Mohan are fully realised, likeable, and strong characters from the get-go. Tushar Hiranandani and Milap Zaveri have written them fully aware of the pitfalls of disabled movie characters being iconic poster-chidren for their particular handicap, and strive to make them not only real, but admirable*.

*(so, basically, this means that since none of the disabled people suffer a lot, this film isn’t going to win any awards)

The film is shot in a sunny, wonderfully lit way by Sunil Patel (who did the equally good-looking Salaam Namaste and Hum Tum). Full marks to him for not succumbing to the usual Hindi film formula of shooting the romantic bits one way, the action bits another and a drama bits a third (which is kind-of a given in a masala-movie). There’s excellent use of match-moving during one song, Love You My Angel. See folks, this is why Hollywood slaved for decades to perfect complex special-effects techniques and equipment — so that Indian filmmakers could make their song sequences even more over the top.

The visual look of the film is rock solid, and this extends to the promo work as well (Samir and I are particularly taken by the film’s logo and posters — they make Darna Zaroori Hai‘s already banal posters standing next to them look even worse!).

Anu Malik’s music is good, hummable stuff but I hadn’t heard much of it before going to see the film, which is a rarity (we in India usually know the soundtracks by heart through radio airplay before a film’s release). I have no doubt that it will be getting more play now that the film’s released.

The action is exciting, well choreographed and believeable (filled with humour, too), and comes complete with a bloody climax straight out of a 1985 Sunny Deol movie. My only quibble is that in some shots the wires haven’t been digitally removed (they either ran out of time or money, or both).

If you want to watch a good, solid, funny movie with all the trappings of a masala movie potboiler from the 1970s and 80s — and something your kids will enjoy (the ones in the theatre around me were hysterical throughout) — then go watch it.

But, a part of me feels that Pyare Mohan is more, and that it will never be appreciated for its solid performances by Fardeen Khan and Viveik Annand Oberoi (to give him his credited name), the slickness and consistency of the overall package, the strong characters who really deserve a sequel (since those are in vogue), and the post-modern revamp of the traditional action-comedy-romance-drama masala movie formula that the film’s team has achieved, keeping the zany features of the old but cutting out all the dead wood and grounding it with touches of the straightforward and honest style of ‘New Hindi Cinema’ (like Dil Chahta Hai or Rang De Basanti). Pyare Mohan is crazy and hopelessly filmi, but it’s still manages to be believeable.

In striking this fine balance, Indra Kumar and Co. have managed to create a film that will hold up to repeated viewing and linger on in your head.

Dammit, all I wanted was a bit of fluff to tide me over until V for Vendetta, but now I think I’ll be quietly chuckling along to the memory of Pyare Mohan‘s blind car chase while the opening credits of V are running.

bleachery and lost plots

Yipes, it’s been a while since I updated! It never feels that like a long time until you look at the current date and the date of your last post and the relative enormity of the period yawns before you. Granted, this may never be a 10-posts-per-day blog (if I did that, I’d only be blogging and nothing else — and I’m quite smitten by the ‘else’ bit right now).

(Click on read more, but be warned, minor Bleach spoilers, and Ginormous LOST spoilers/rants/etc)

The ‘else’ that I should be doing is not really happening. I’m falling behind on things, hemming and hawing about what to do next, what to finish up, what to keep aside for awhile. This usually ends with me prioritising everything to Level 1 AAA ASAP and then not doing any of it.

I’m such a jerk.

Have been watching some TV, or at least what can be classified as TV since it’s primarily broadcast somewhere but I can’t be bothered to sit at home at the time and wade through mind-numbing commercials to watch them. I enjoy some of the late night slots as they tend to be lighter on the ads — or entirely commercial free — and this is integral to keeping the interest up in a show that requires concentration, like LOST. I’m not one of those obsessive LOST junkies (LOSTies? LOSTers? LOSTophiles? The LOSTettes?) who freeze-frames every moment to search for new clues to the Big Secret™ — I just like the characters and the way the show is written, but more on that later.

I spent much of last week putting a bunch of Bleach episodes behind me, namely the latter part of the Soul Society arc. I had stopped somewhere halfway through when Ichigo was trying to find his new sword — had to go on vacation — and since the plot didn’t seem to be resolving itself anytime soon I decided to wait until it did and just watch the episodes in a batch, which I have now done (this was one of the great things about watching Lost season 1 — I just binged on the episodes and finished the season in a week. Waiting for each new episode now — for more than a fortnight sometimes — is very testing, especially with the current state of the show. But more on that later).

I’m glad I waited for the entire arc to become available before watching it. Bleach is a show that has more than 40 characters who could be considered actual three-dimensional people, and keeping up with who’s who and what’s what with one week gaps is not easy. I’m not saying that there should be less characters, however, as the main reason I love Bleach (other than the frequent sudden left turns into out-and-out slapstick or farce) is the sheer number of characters.

Each of them are, firstly, designed really well. Each is distinct in looks and personality while fitting familiar yet quirky archetypes, but what really makes them special is that each and every one has a back-story of some kind that is illuminated during the show. Any one of these side-characters could have a series of their own with the stories they are given. Like Lost, but on an entirely different level, people are interconnected and have real relationships, so the Soul Society doesn’t seem like just a video-game level with a number of opponents to be dispatched by the central protagonist (who doesn’t even appear for entire episodes). By the end of the arc I was quite sad to see the main characters leave the place, and the end of six concurrent plots running at once. Although I know that the ‘Gotei 13’ will keep popping up through the rest of the series, a part of me wishes that the funny extra segments at the end of the episodes are not all that we see of that world.

Bleach and Lost both represent a style of storytelling that is more literary in nature, and that too a more ancient, epic style. The last time I saw a show like Bleach with its dozens of characters it was the TV serial version of the Mahabharata — I wasn’t sure why subsequent mythological shows about Krishna or Hanuman failed to keep my interest (okay, so they all had terrible acting, direction, special effects and dialogue, but so did the Mahabharata serial), and now I seem to have found the answer: they just weren’t dense enough. Even 26 episode limited animé series have more dense plots than entire ten season runs
of American TV shows (I’m not taking about Soap Operas here — those are an entirely different breed), but that’s primarily because almost all animé is based on a manga — a literary root that is free of the need to pander to the three act structure, to have something big during the sweeps period, to be pre-empted by sports at the drop of a hat (come on, this is the 21st century — don’t you guys have dedicated Sports Channels?).

When I first started watching Bleach I was somewhat uneasy with the fact that it was the first anime series I had watched with more than a finite 26 episode run. I wasn’t sure if it could sustain my interest over a great length, that it would, at some point, degenerate into some kind of ‘creature of the week’ show with minimal character development (a bit like Smallville), doubly so because of the tiny 24 minute run compared to most 50 minute American drama shows, where a finite effects and guest star budget means that they just have to shoe-horn in some character development purely because it’s cheaper (unless you’re CSI, in which case your central cast have no back-story, and woohoo, that’s why I like that show — it’s pure whodunnit/howdunnit). Now that I look back at everything that has happened over the last 64 episodes of Bleach, I’m convinced that anything less would be a severe disservice to the characters.

On the other hand, the show that is currently doing a great disservice to its characters — the one show that shouldn’t — is LOST.

(btw, it is now, as mentioned earlier, officially ‘later’)

The first season of LOST is nothing short of spectacular. It’s marvellously written, well acted, put together with wit and precision and has enough surprises and play to make you enjoy the ride. The second season, however, is trudging along quite pathetically. The show seems to have got mired in its central premise — that of the mystery island — and has almost completely ignored the what made LOST great in the first place, which was the character development. It’s as if somebody stepped back at the end of season 1, said, “Hey, hold on, we’re getting feedback that there are all these sites and communities
online poring over everything we’re doing, and some people say the flashbacks are getting the way.”

Taking this to heart, the current show is recycling wholesale character traits we all got to know last season, thereby putting its central dozen characters in a state of flux. We get more facts about them in flashback, but nothing more about the characters. Sawyer is a con man, only now we know he’s… a con man? Hmm, I knew that already. Jack is a doctor with a saviour complex, but now we know… he has a saviour complex? Charlie’s still a shifty drug-addicted maniac, Claire is a talking head who is always screaming something about her Baby, and Micheal is sort of like Claire only replace baby with, “WAAAAAAALLLT!”

They killed off Boone (cardboard cutout), they killed off Shannon (cardboard cutout), thereby leaving the show with a severe lack of pretty, and they replaced them with one stoic black guy who turns out to be a Nigerian drug dealer (no!), a testy woman who is a cop with a past (the shock is killing me, it is, friend), and a vaguely creepy psychiatrist who will probably turn out to be ‘one of them’ soon, if they don’t kill her too, just to prove to us that having your name on the main cast doesn’t exempt you from reducing you to appearing only in flashbacks and as a ghost/spirit/jolt device (which, when you you add it up, is about as much screen time as some of the cast is getting anyway, so no biggie).

There have been a couple of good episodes in the vein of the first season; the one about how Jin met Sun is sweet, but the one that actually got close enough to season one’s greatness was the Hurley episode where he’s fussing about the rations in the hatch as well as when he won the lottery. That one was good. There’s a Sun episode that I haven’t seen yet. Hopefully it won’t disappoint, but then again Jin and Sun not being the alpha characters in the group they tend to get better characterisation from the beginning — something other than ‘noble/misunderstood hero with dark secrets in past’ which describes
Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Eko, Ana Lucia and Locke as well (I’m pretty-sure that in some upcoming episode we find out he ran his no-good daddy over with his wheelchair, probably 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42 times).

I’d be somewhat alright with all of this stupid lack of character development if the actual plot was going anywhere, but that too just seems to be playing out in slow motion, adding in Gilligan’s Island-style ‘guest of the week’ plots and not being patricularly interesting. Now everything important seems to happen within twenty minutes of the campsite (the good-old days of shuttling between the caves and the beach are long gone), and that sense of scale and travel, of this relatively huge island that was glimpsed from the raft at the end of season one is gone, replaced by these set locations of Hatch,
Beach, Veggie Patch, bit of Jungle, and more jungle. They hardly ever go to that nice golf course anymore. They don’t explore because, of course, the scary Others people might get them.

They even showed us the monster — it’s a particle effect. It chases people who run. You look at it, it stops. Okay, let’s move on. There’s this whole thing about other hatches, how some of them are seemingly gutted or abandoned, and a million other things that the show has either forgotten or is struggling to juggle long enough that it seems to be relevant, but it has to stand still to achieve this.

There’s that silly thing about the guy in the weapons locker who seems to turn Locke’s screws so easily the entire bit belongs in a third-rate soap opera. If this season ends up with another series of abductions and the discovery of another hatch, I’ll firmly recommend that someone just put together a twenty-minute cut of the entire season and just skip the thing.

I think it’s confirmed that I’m a character person. I really don’t give two hoots about plots as long as the characters are worth watching. Which is why I liked the Sci-Fi miniseries The Triangle. The plot is pretty normal, and later it develops a few holes, but overall I was quite satisfied with it because it’s got great characters (written and played very well). It harkens back to an older, simpler era of pulpy SF that owed more to detective fiction than Kung Fu and Mythological epics (which have their place, like in Bleach) — straight-faced, adult characters with nary a hip pop-culture reference or a fetishised
unfurling of shiny technology and gadgetry. I miss that.

The Triangle also has one heck of an epilogue, and leaves the series open for the characters to maybe be spun off into their own series or returning adventures (please please please) instead of the usual way of leaving the major plot open for reissue so that you can churn out asequel without returning the cast. Plots are notoriously hard to make sequels out of, characters less so. Look at James Bond.

Plots are tricky because they have no inherent qualities that endear us to them. It’s a plot, it’s a device, a structure. Rang De Basanti doesn’t work because of its plot (which is more silly than superb), it works because of the characters. Bleach doesn’t have any single plot moment where I went ‘Whoah, what a story!’ but it has tons of moments involving great characters — witty, funny, smart, serious, emotional, farcical moments — that make me want to re-watch the whole thing eventually. The Star Wars prequels aren’t disliked because humanity has an allergy to Trade Federation politics, it was because there was no freaking Han Solo and no Princess Leia. There was no “Yes Your Worshipfulness” and “I love you.” “–I know.”

I think back to Primer, which I liked and was happy with plot-wise (heck, it was fuckin’ brilliant), but the characters were as bland as their white shirts, and I have no desire to watch it again.

Someone needs to tell LOST to lose the plot and get back to the characters, or it will just end up as another show with some cheap-trick plot ending that isn’t fully revealed, and even if it does everyone will forget it when the next show comes along.

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there is a god

As if one piece of dorkgasm-inducing news wasn’t enough, here’s two.

I know bad news comes in threes but know no such rule for good news. On
the other hand, I know of enough people who would consider the above
two pieces bad news, so here’s hoping something similar arises!

(Prays for Nowhere Man Season 2 Greenlight)

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reviewing basanti

I tried.

I really did. There were long, drawn out drafts that went into every nitty-gritty of the plot, the acting, the music, the cinematography, the postprocessing, and it ended up sounding like a thesis, or worse, the script for a Crier’s announcement of his King.

I tried short versions, but they didn’t really convey what the film is about, or do anything other tha say, “Hey, it’s good.”

I know that while 99.99% of people who have seen Rang De Basanti have loved it — myself included — that there are a few for whom it is just not going to click. If you’re jaded with life, remember every action movie made in the 1980s very fondly, or are expecting everyone
in the film to shack up and get married to elaborate Farah Khan choreography, then be warned: you’re either going to dislike the movie, or it will change you completely.

This one is right up there with Lagaan.

Watch it now.

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watching basanti

There’s a new Aamir Khan movie out.

Usually I would be avoiding theatres like the plague now, waiting until next week or so when I can watch the movie without the excess chatter of first-day-first-show types who really aren’t interested in the movie so much as being able to say they’ve seen the movie. However, thanks in part to UTV’s extensive, news-channel heavy marketing campaign for their new film, and my father’s addiction to said news channels, I knew it would be inevitable that by midweek I would either overhear the entire plot (it’s a house where sound carries very well — I can hear the TV in the bathroom), or more likely it would be narrated to me by my excited parent.

Look, I’m a polite person, and I’ve even asked him — several times — to just not discuss anything about forthcoming movies with me, but still he persists, eyes wide like a five year old who’s just seen two of his teachers kissing behind the canteen, in rattling out the latest, juiciest gossip. He knows I don’t care who Abhishek Bachchan is supposed to be currently dating, so he likes to impress me with the latest he has gleaned about the movies I intend to watch. I can’t exactly punch him in the face when he’s driving down a highway at 120kph, can I?

I don’t like movie spoilers. This is why I never watch more than a teaser trailer for any film. I’m thankful that Indian films start off with a ten second teaser, then release a bunch of ‘song’ teasers leading up to its release, and only show ‘plot’ trailers about a week before, at which time I’m avoiding the TV anyway. I’m also thankful that none of the English theatres seem to show any theatrical trailers of movies I’m actually interested in (What? Jennifer Lopez and Jane Fonda don’t get along in Monster-in-Law? Nooo!).

With all this in mind, and prepared for a week of tense spoiler-avoidage, I was a little thankful that Candy had a sudden urge to go see the movie this past weekend. I was weary from the previous week’s Guestgiri, and nothing would have pleased me more than to watch a good Hindi movie. Still, I had a few reservations.

“We won’t get tickets,” I said. “It’s an Aamir Khan movie on the first non-working day since its release. No way, except maybe in one of the multiplexes, and that too we’ll get crappy seats and be surrounded by idiots*.”

*(okay, so this is the main reason I don’t go to Lamcy Plaza anymore, because — other than the smallness of the screen — there you’re always surrounded by idiots. I remember missing the first half hour of Parineeta because we had taken the last three available seats in the row and the guy next to me — who had come in 15 minutes late — was trying to convince me to scoot over a seat because someone of his was expected. I wasn’t going to scoot over into an already taken seat even though it was at the time empty. Ten minutes later the two from those empty seats show up and it turns out that they are with the annoying guy next to me, and in fact they had booked their tickets together but somehow left three seats in-between.

Idiots.)

When we got to the theatre I decided to just throw caution to the wind and let my father get tickets. My god, it was as if someone had asked him to commit murder. I finally know where I get my jittery/nervous/deer-in-headlights response from (lucky for me I also inherited my mother’s Athena-meets-an-immovable-cosmic-constant expression, which works).

Somehow we managed to send the kids (i.e. my Dad and Candy’s mom) to get the tickets. The theatre was nearly booked up, but thankfully it was free seating. Another advantage of going to the multiplex, although the ticket price is higher, and I usually pick seats near the front which are always empty because apparently no self-respecting Indian wants to see a movie from a seat where the screen appears any bigger than his 21″ TV at home.

We actually had to queue up — this has never happened at a Multiplex and it was apparent from the expressions on the cinema staff that this was a new occurrence too. Baffled non-Indians passing by looked on, their extra-large popcorns trembling under the weight of a shattered world view. A packed theatre, with a queue… in Dubai!

While there was a large crowd in line ahead of us, they were good Indians and headed straight for the nosebleed section of the hall, smug grin announcing the fact that they had got prime, picture-skewing ‘corner seats’ (the other coveted position of the Indian filmgoer, if travelling in a couple). Candy, Samir and I headed for the first row past the central aisle, roughly 1/3 away from the screen. They’re great seats, look straight ahead at the screen with no skewing, and the only thing in front of you is a balustrade and the aisle, just the way I like it. It doesn’t have the drama of Stalls Row 18 at Regal or First Row Centre at Eros, but then, what pre-fab multiplex has? My father and Candy’s mom headed straight for nosebleed. We never saw them again.

The theatre filled up behind us, with only the fashionably late arriving with petite tubs of popcorn and cotton candy shuffling into the seats next to us, complaining that all the ‘good ones’ at the back were taken.

At this point the ads started up so thankfully all this chatter was drowned out by CineStar’s louder-than average sound (another good reason to go there. It was a little treble-heavy during Van Helsing, but when we watched Serenity the seats literally shook when ships passed by onscreen). Nancy Ajram’s ‘Coke fizz tickles my nose’ ad is as bleh as
ever. The other one with the woman trying to get her le parkeour on is slightly better, but still underdeveloped (the woman is supposed to be a real life music video director. What she’s doing swinging from chains while Nancy suffers coke fizz assault is a matter that must be looked into). The Dodge Charger ad is very black, steals equally from the trailer to Torque and a million different car commercials before it, and goes by in a blur of post-processed neutral grey-blue and forced rap ‘jingle’. What happened to the good old days, when Peugeot’s African arm was showing people pelting through the Congo doing dangerous stunts in a stock hatchback and getting a “Bravo, Jacques!” from the narrator?

On to the movie trailers (they showed English ones before the movie, and Hindi ones at intermission, but I’m grouping them together here). Ooh, the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie! Teaser trailer, so I don’t mind. Hmm, the producers seem to be playing the “Let’s make it even more like The Secret of Monkey Island!” game. I swear, Davy Jones even has LeChuck’s writing beard, only with postmodern hentai tentacle-sex references thrown in. It’s subtitled ‘Dead Man’s Chest’ at which point I was forced to utter, out loud and in full earshot of the decent, moral folk surrounding me, “Shaved or hairy?”

The sound of the next trailer starting up drowns out the screams.

Memoirs of a Geisha looked underwhelming when I saw the trailer on TV. On the big screen the same trailer looks gorgeous. I still don’t give two hoots about the story, but it has Michelle Yeoh, and I’m going to go see it just for her and the awesome cinematography. Next!

Oh look, it’s that blond guy who was in everything. Ooh, he’s threatening to kill someone’s girlfriend, but there’s a gun pointed to his head, and you almost feel like cheering for the guy — no, wait, wtf–aaaatomcruiseaaaaa! So, Mission Impossible Three looks a bit… generic. I can’t remember anything other than that opening monologue, and that Tom Cruise, fresh off impersonating James Bond in the first and Revlon Haircare products in the second (while doves flew in the background — do not forget the doves), is now some kind of hybrid of Sam Fisher from Splinter Cell, that dude from Syphon Filter, and every other black-ops/espionage/tactical/squad/stealth video game out there. Thankfully there were no overt Solid Snake references, unless the film opens with Cruise regurgitating a pack of cigs. You’d think that with JJ Abrams involved we’d at least get a Sidney Bristow-style cherry-red wig, but noooo…

The Hindi trailers were quite welcome, after that. Earlier I had no interest in Taxi No.9211, but the teaser trailer impressed me with its witty theme song (“sone ke sheher me sone ko jagah nahi” — sorry, the pun is untranslatable), the trailer’s lovely moving typography, and the fact that it’s produced by Ramesh Sippy and directed by Milan Luthria. You sold me a ticket, boys.

The teaser for Krrish, Rakesh Roshan’s sequel to Koi… Mil Gaya was next. Not only is it one of the first true sequels to a Hindi movie, but it’s a full-fledged superhero yarn, and I don’t recall any Hindi movie that’s tackled that well. The wirework looks nice, the cinematography bright and unusual, but the costume looks a bit iffy now. Still, I underestimated this team before when I went to see Krrish‘s prequel — came out pleasantly surprised — so I won’t understimate them again.

There was a very brief and quickly put-together teaser — well, it was more like a series of  studio shots of the cast set to music and flat Flash graphics — for Priyadarshan’s next, Chup Chup Ke (I hope I got the name right; there are so many movies with variations on ‘chup’ and ‘ke’ that a boy is bound to be confoozled). It didn’t look particularly interesting. Rajpal Yadav behaving like Rajpal Yadav. Neha Dhupia doing… well, something. I can’t even remember who the hero is, but hey, it has Kareena Kapoor. Worth a rental on that basis alone, although cinema-sized Kareena — when they do her makeup right, like in Asoka and Yuva — is a wonder to behold (her new Pepsi ‘Cafe Chino’ ad is a wonder for all the wrong reasons, however).

On to the actual movie (um, I’m doing an actual review later, this is just all the peripheral stuff, that’s why it’s in Out-and-About rather than Review-o-Matic). The first thing you notice when watching a Hindi movie in a usually English/American movie heavy multiplex is the sound. It’s LOUD. An American movie is quite even and pretty quiet, with even the loudest volumes reserved only for the biggest of explosions and events. Not so in Hindi movies, where everything from the dialogue to the score — especially the score — is pumped up to the maximum. I remember Farhan Akhtar saying that when they were mixing Lakshya abroad they kept asking the sound guys to make
it louder, something they were a little apprehensive about. He told the sound engineer that if he didn’t put it higher people watching it in India would rip out the seats and throw them at the screen. Remember, we are the culture that screams into phones when it’s a long distance call.

The colours were magnificent and the print pin-sharp, and it being only the third day of screening there were no scratches. There was this sick feeling I had during the title song a half hour in when the AC3 cut out and the system fell back on the flatter, softer , but by no means less comprehensible optical stereo track for an extended period of time, but luckily it rectified itself and the rest was smooth sailing.

I waited through to the end of the credits (Indian film credits are pretty short anyway — we aren’t contractually obliged to thank everyone and their agent), but that was mainly to listen to the excellent song ‘Roobaroo‘ in full surround sound glory.

Outside another, even larger line was forming for the next show, and, quite overwhelmed by the movie I’d just seen, I staggered out into the throng of the mall, satisfied that come what may, no spoilers would wound me now.

On this note, stay away from most reviews of the film, as they are spoilerrific as hell. Taran Adarsh over at indiafm even gives away the ending! Blasphemy.

I’ll try to keep the review short. I could go on and on about numerous aspects of Rang De Basanti, but in short: it r0XX0red my b0XX0rz.

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sorting hat

It’s a new year, so I decided to finally work on the rest of the site. A redesign has been done, it’s been implemented to HTML, but I’ll only put it up when I get the rest of it done otherwise I’ll just end up changing the blog and sitting on it for a year again. Should be another week before I sort out all my work and type up the entry pages for them, and the end of which I should hopefully have a (fully-working) site.

Meanwhile you should all go see Woody Allen’s Match Point, which I was lucky enough to see an advanced screening of (it releases tomorrow here, but is already out in places in the US).

Do not watch trailers or read reviews, as this film is best watched ‘cold.’ Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

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