Tag: Reviews

birds, planes and flying spandex perverts

One of the disadvantages of living in a country that is obsessed with football is that during the world cup or the European cup the country pretty-much comes to a standstill entertainment-wise (the upshot being that evening traffic is much reduced). Movie releases are postponed by months because the attendance figures in cinemas drop, and that is why, much later than the rest of the world, Superman Returns only opened here this weekend.

Usually I stay away from the first weekend crowd, because they’re too noisy and irate and walk in late, still talking on the phone no less. However, this was Superman, so I decided to risk an early Thursday show*. Guess what, the fire alarm went off just as the opening Warner Bros. logo came up. Lights start flashing, alarms blaring, projection shuts down.

(*Thursday/Friday being the weekend, but many people work a half-day on Thursday so there was a good chance most of the crowd I dislike wouldn’t be there until the later shows, and I was right.)

I had to wade through mind-numbing Coca-Cola and Fair & Lovely ads for this?! Luckily, a few false starts later, the nice new DC logo came up, and it was smooth sailing from there. To be more precise, smooth flying.

I don’t think I’ve conveyed quite how much of a cultural icon Superman is to an Indian my age. When I was growing up in the eighties, Superman (the 1978 Richard Donner film) was one of the first films I had ever seen in a theatre (moving to Oman later relegated me to videoland, but that medium helped to teach me much about cinematic form and language). Every year or so the film would be back in Indian theatres, and every time it did my dad would take us to see it. At the local raddiwalla, Superman comics were priced higher than other comics, even Archie. Spider-Man was on TV, but Superman could fly. He had that fantastic, soul-stirring background music to go with it (Spider-Man had some strange 70s rock thing and a funny theme song). I had a Superman suit when I was a kid (it was black. hehehe) and still have a photo of me trying to fake a flying shot (one of my legs was hidden behind a light-coloured headboard — it was pretty convincing). I still have that suit somewhere.

No, I don’t think it fits.

A long time has passed between those days and now. A lot of comics, a lot of movies, and a lot of comic-book movies (in the nineties I would never have imagined that we’d have any comic book superhero movies any more, and the future seemed bleak and dull and populated by Schwarzenegger sweat-and-gun-a-thons), two good TV shows about the guy and a plethora of Elseworlds interpretations (of which Mark Millar’s excellent Superman: Red Son, about a man of steel who is raised in Russia instead of the USA is my favourite, and a must read).

I was a little worried that the simplicity of Superman would not be enough to entertain me anymore.

Boy, was I wrong. Bryan Singer and crew have crafted an amazing piece of film. It stays true to what has come before it and yet, just as the previous films reinvented the character and created a lot of the mythology that we consider a part of the character today, Superman Returns does away with the restictive, old-fashioned collective idea of what Superman is and gets to the heart of the character, showing for what he is: complex, straightforward and most importantly, good.

SPOILER WARNING

They also cheekily take the film in a direction that should have fans howling, but again this subplot should only really offend those who cling to the Superman-as-ascetic-Jesus-figure notion (an incorrect one, if you’ve ever read the comic). This fan, for one, is very glad that the movie goes boldly, where no official canon, retcon-fearing comic-book writer every dares (but secretly wishes) to go, and they do it subtly.

END SPOILER

The film is a very quiet one (another quality I love about the old Superman, as well as Bryan Singer’s films), and except for Kate Bosworth’s well performed, but straight and bland version of Lois Lane (who, from comic to screen to radio to TV has always been portrayed as a bit of a nut), the entire cast (especially Brandon Routh and Kevin Spacey) put in masterful performances, aided by the classic John Williams score and the new John Ottman compositions.

I’m very tempted to go see this one again to catch what I missed, because I’m sure I missed a lot when I was just grinning like a little boy.

Excuse me, I need to go find a cape.

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.

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.

V

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.

V

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.

V

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.

V

timepass

I’m in Mumbai, getting caught up in wedding fever (my cousin’s getting hitched — we’re trying to keep her sane). Haven’t posted because no pictures have been taken other than stuff at the engagement, and you know I don’t post personal photos. Other than that I’ve been trying to catch as many movies as I can in between all the wedding madness that accompanies and Indian wedding, and all so far have been good.

Neal and Nikki was naughty and totally unapologetic about it, and I loved every bawdy minute of it. Extra points for the My Sassy Girl homage.

Home Delivery, mark my words, is what hindi movies will look like thirty years from now. Spellbinding stuff.

Bluffmaster, which I have just seen today, is… well, what can I say? It’s hilarious, slick, superbly acted and paced, has so many beautiful shots of the Mumbai I know and love (that sunset over Fort with Rajabhai tower just about floored me) and has the two words that will sell any hindi movie to me:

1)Abhishek
2)Bachchan

They also showed a trailer for Rang De Basanti, which looks awesome, and actually drew thunderous applause in Eros Cinema when the Censor Board certificate came up — first time I’ve seen that. Aamir Khan and Abhishek Bachchan are the only two hindi film actors who rate this kind of audience response. Not AB senior, not even Shah Rukh Khan. When Abshishek shows up in the first two minutes of the feature his first lines were drowned out by claps, whistles and hoots (the last one, I must note, came mainly from the females in the audience).

There’s nothing quite like watching a Bombay movie in Bombay.

V

yahaan review

“Don’t talk to them, Sir — they’re locals,” says a jawaan to his commanding officer. The central conflict in Shoojit Sircar’s Yahaan is best summed up by this line. It’s the strange paradox of soldiers who don’t trust the people they are protecting, and vice versa.

Kashmir has always been the central issue in most Indian war films, but it has always been handled in a detached way. Since insurgency began in 1989 almost no films have actually shot in the valley (Yahaan is an exception), and even when some other location is meant to be Kashmir, it only serves as a backdrop for heroic, patriotic soldiers to scream at vile terrorists or armed forces from ‘our neighbours.’ Kashmiris are relegated to cannon fodder, fleeing peasants, or oddly Punjabi love interests with nothing to do beyond a song and a brisk abduction near the climax.

The Indian war film, however, is changing — for the better, I might add. Last year we had Farhan and Javed Akhtar’s Lakshya which, even if its specific frontier setting was removed, still worked as a top notch tale about a soldier’s motivations, and, more broadly, a human’s need for a purpose and the finding of it. However, that film’s political side was expertly handled too, neatly crystallising the core of the India/Pakistan conflict into a three hour film — no easy task, and something not even achieved by three J.P. Dutta films (Border, Refugee and L.O.C. Kargil).

While Lakshya told the soldier’s tale through Kashmir’s eyes, Yahaan tells the story of Kashmiris through a soldier’s eyes. On his first posting in the valley, Captain Aman (Jimmy Shergill) is put in charge of protecting a small town. His bunker sits next to a house in which a beautiful girl (Minissha Lamba) lives, and needless to say the two fall in love.

This is really only the skeleton of the plot, as it serves to help flesh out a number of well-integrated threads about foreign terrorists, army corruption, the fear both the Kashmiri people and the Army harbor for each other, and Kashmir as this place removed from the rest of the world. It would be easy to make a heavy-handed film like most Indian war movies before it, but Yahaan handles itself with pitch-perfect subtlety (it’s needless to mention here that while the film was critically acclaimed — even winning an award — it was not a huge commercial success).

The film reminds me a lot of another Jimmy Shergill movie, Charas (also an under-appreciated favourite of mine) — that film was also set in a far removed and forgotten part of India, but its plot had things to say about us all. Jimmy Shergill might be the most underrated actor in the country right now (along with Prashant Narayanan), but he hasn’t crossed over into B-movie territory (B meaning ‘Bad’ here), and continues to pick great roles in great films and bring something special to them. Captain Aman may have twenty lines in the entire movie — no Sunny Deol-style patriotic speeches here — but Shergill just owns the screen even when he isn’t saying anything.

Minissha Lamba gets most of the lines — indeed, her character has more to say — and while she’s very pretty and emotes well, her dialogue delivery can be strangely clipped; it slows down when you expect her to speed up. It’s still a good, solid performance, however, and any dialogue quibbles are lost in the excellence of the rest of the film.

The real surprise, however, is the amazing work by the supporting cast. From some known names like Yashpal Sharma (who usually plays baddies but does a brilliantly conflicted and sensitive version here), to complete unknowns like the people who play Adaa’s family, they all bring something special and memorable to the table. Even the sniper in Aman’s platoon — ‘Tendulkar’ — is good despite having only two lines and around thirty seconds of screen time.

Lakshya had a foreign cinematographer (Christopher Popp), and so does Yahaan in the form of Jakob Ihre. His work is nothing short of magnificent. Popp shot mainly in Ladakh and gave the film a huge feeling of space, with sunny meadows and wide open vistas, but Ihre goes the opposite way, shooting tight and close, low angles and a lot of good handheld work. Kashmir is perpetually bathed in blue during the day, only showing warmer colours at night and in Adaa’s home. The feeling of claustrophobic confines even in an open, heavenly valley is palpable. The good camerawork and editing extends to both the calm rural scenes and the action scenes (of which a bomb blast at interval point is a particular highlight).

This is Shantanu Moitra’s first major work on film songs since his breakthrough in Parineeta earlier this year, and he continues to show a flair for more earthy, acoustic tunes. It would be interesting to see what he makes of, say, a hip hop or club song now. Gulzar’s lyrics continue to be sublime. If Javed Akhtar is Da Vinci, then Gulzar must be Dali, and that analogy still doesn’t do his work justice. Needless to say, the lyrics are pretty-much untranslatable. Learn Hindi, it’s easier than you think.

Moitra and Gulzar’s songs however, are overshadowed by newcomer Sameeruddin’s spellbinding background score. As subtle as Sircar’s direction, as evocative as Ihre’s cinematography — it’s so good it that once again I must plead and pray that the Indian music industry at least takes a chance and brings out a proper soundtrack album of a film rather than just the songs. Maybe as downloads? I’d pay for that.

Yahaan is a must watch, and a worthy companion to Lakshya if you’re looking for a double feature. What more is there to say? Well, the film was originally titled Adaa, but I’m glad they changed it to Yahaan (Here). As I write this there as been another terrorist bomb attack in Srinagar, but after seeing the film it no longer feels as if it took place in some far, unknown, altogether alien part of the world called Kashmir.

It feels like here.

BMWfilms: “The Hire”

I’ve finally got round to watching those BMW commercial short films (collectively called “The Hire“) that people have been raving about for years. Don’t bother looking for them now, because they’ve been taken offline. You can get them on DVD if you pay around 5$ shipping and handling, and for 5$ I’d say they’re definitely worth your time.

I had heard of them before but was never quite interested, mostly because the trailer I saw was for the Guy Ritchie-directed, Madonna-featured episode which seemed quite painful, squealy-tired stunt driving notwithstanding. Add to that a computer that has never quite mixed with streaming video, and I wasn’t exactly gagging to sit down and try to watch them.

Recently however, with their impeding removal from free circulation, my interest was piqued, as was the fact that I now realised the other films in the series were directed by such people as John Frankenheimer and John Woo, and even more interesting, totally strange choices like Ang Lee and Wong Kar Wai (whose work I’ve been curious about, but never actually seen).

The films pretty much follow the same basic scenario: ‘The Driver’ (played by Clive Owen) is some kind of for-hire expert — what else — driver, who has to transport someone or something in some model of BMW car. Usually bad guys show up, give chase, shoot stuff, and at the end of seven minutes or so the plot resolves itself in a tidy way. If this sounds sort of like the excellent Transporter movies, then yeah, Frank Martin from that series and Clive’s unnamed driver character have the same job description. Since the series more or less came out in the same time period (The Hire may have been a little before though) it’s hard to tell who is copying who, or if it was just a case of a two teams thinking up a good concept (that was probably ripped off some obscure Asian action movie).

Being short films, the plots are dead simple, so any entertainment will be gained from the individual director’s approach to the material, and this is definitely the case. Each film is unique in the way it handles the seven slender minutes it has. Let’s take a closer look:

Ambush
Directed John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate)

This is the simplest of the films. Driver and passenger are ambling along a dark country road in a BMW sedan (I can’t really tell my 5 series from my 7 series, especially before Bangle started making them distinctly ugly) when a van pulls up along side them, masked men point guns and demand they stop and hand over the passenger, and a car chase ensues.

In Frankenheimer’s deft hands, this converts to a white-knuckle, pedal to the metal car chase devoid of a background score. He knows we want to hear that engine roar, hear each gear shift as Clive not so much tosses as precision-manoeuvres the silver bullet about.

Newton Thomas Sigel’s roller-coaster cinematography really drives home (no pun intended) the sensation of speed using low angles and POV shots illuminated only by the BMW’s headlights. Robert Duffy’s editing is crisp and clear; unlike a million car chases I’ve seen, you know exactly what is going on and the thrill is 120%. I actually tried to duck out of the way a couple of times. Ambush is a good, old fashioned chase like they used to make ’em.

Chosen
Directed by Ang Lee (Hulk, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Sense and Sensibility(!))

Remember those videos of little French hatchbacks doing circles and figure eights set to ballet music? Well, that’s pretty much the case here, except it’s a BMW, an SUV and a Dodge Neon (Wha? Of all the cars to cast as a Bad Guy car in a chase, they get a Dodge Neon?!). Our driver picks up a kid dressed in Tibetan Buddhist monk outfit at the freezing docks, bad guys show up, lots of slippy-slidey, with a somewhat damp denoument post-chase that overstays its welcome and is awkwardly acted. Of all the films in the series, this feels the most as if the director was fully aware he was making a fluffy commercial and didn’t take it seriously.

In stark contrast to Ambush, Chosen is set to classical-style string music, and while it sort of works, the really fun part is in this extended bit set in a maze of cargo containers that could be straight out of a Looney Toons “corridor with many doors” skit. Things go downhill from here as said limp denoument overstays its welcome, then further annoys with a groan-inducing Ang Lee in-joke. It’s not a bad film on its own, but do watch it before Ambush, as it’s almost as bad as…

Star
Directed by Guy Ritchie (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Swept Away(!))

Ugh. Tantrum-throwing star tantrums her way tantrumifically into Clive’s waiting sedan, proceeds to tantrum some more until he gets a call from the star’s manager who has hired our intrepid driver to do what he does best, which is make hair-raising three point turns in no points whatsoever and a clever use of the handbrake. It’s nice to see the driver character loosen up a bit and behave in entirely stupid ways, and the post-processing-heavy camera work is interesting (lots of those computer aided ‘car always in the centre’ type shots which make it look like a video game), but there’s so little driving here that it’s all for naught.

Ritchie seems to think at we’re all here to see Madonna (uncredited, for reasons unknown), so half the movie is spent in close ups of her scrunching up her nose and delivering bad dialogue in an awful manner. Look, I understand that the whole film is done over the top, and Madonna behaving like a bitchy diva rock star is — in theory, at least — funny, but she can’t act and she’s annoying. Give us more car and more Clive! Owen’s manic expressions during the stunts tip the scales back towards watchable, but still nothing I’m in a hurry to re-watch.

Hostage
Directed by John Woo (Mission Impossible 2, Face/Off)

When this one starts up, you feel as if you’ve been dropped somewhere in the climax of a 90 minute Hollywood action movie. All the John Woo staples are there including slick, slow-motion macro shots of shell casings, well, just bouncing; revolver barrels primed for Russian Roulette spinning and dissolving to the icy-grey hubcap of a BMW Z4. Easily the most polished looking of all the films, Hostage follows the driver’s attempt to deliver a ransom and get the titular hostage back. It seems to be crammed with the most plot of all the films too, but in short films less is more, and here the more is definitely a bad thing. In a 90 minute movie you have time to get to know the character, you get to care about them. Throwing us in at the deep end only ends up giving the viewer emotional disconnection. We know what is going on, and we can maybe roll it back in our minds to see why we should care, but it’s only 5 minutes and we really don’t care about anything that happens plot-wise.

Like most big budget action movies, things just happen that don’t make any sense, all for the sake of action hijinks (if Clive delivered the ransom with a SWAT team accompanying him, why then are city police chasing him not two minutes later as he tries to race to the bridge? Didn’t anybody tell them he’s on their side?). There’s an attempt at classic film noir plotting, but like Star and Chosen the film both suffers from a slow build up and a long, cold denoument. Unfortunately the car chase in between isn’t particularly exciting either. In Woo’s attempt to make it all look slick, the stunt driving also seems cold. The good performances by the lead trio of Owen, Maury Chaykin and Kathryn Morris can’t save Hostage from being a cold — but beautiful — film that may have made a great feature.

Unfortunately, it’s a short.

Ticker
Directed by Joe Carnahan (Narc)

Ticker tries to play on post 9/11 paranoia, leading us to believe that Clive is transporting a terrorist and his bomb (that might just be going off riight… now), and for the most part it succeeds. There’s a lot of good car in this (the Z4 again) but it’s overshadowed — quite literally — by a large blackhawk helicopter that gets much of the footage.

Some lovely cinematography, especially the opening shot of bullets on tarmac, but the film is told in a melodramatic fashion that just doesn’t work for a 7 minute short. Like in Hostage, we haven’t really invested enough running time to care about what’s going on, and telling rather than showing us is not going to help just because you decided to stick a feature story in a short.

Don Cheadle and Owen are good, as always (Ray Liotta and a Dennis Haysbert show up as window dressing — and did I see Robert Patrick for a split-second?), but the lines are acted rather than said, and that’s not always a good thing. Worth it for the final shot of Clive back in the car, when, surprisingly — and only for a moment — the plot works and resonates.

But only just.

Beat the Devil
Directed by Tony Scott (Man on Fire, Top Gun)

Wowie, is this ever a weird one. I’d love to see what kind of substance Tony Scott took when he made this, but whatever it was, it worked. Beat the Devil is one of those mad, crazy films that teeters on the edge of being completely ridiculous (and hence off-putting), but manages to keep itself in check with such aplomb that you can’t help but marvel at it. The plot involves Clive, the Devil (Gary Oldman! In a leotard! Riding a motorised wheelchair!) and James Brown.

Yup.

To say any more would be pointless, because Beat the Devil is all in the seeing of it. It’s shot with amazing energy (by Paul Cameron — no wonder, he did Collateral too), oversaturated, lots of motion streaks and warm lights, and edited with equal mastery (by Skip Chaisson). While Hostage may have been the most slick, Beat the Devil is better because of its controlled chaos.

It’s also laugh-out-loud funny, which is always a good thing.

Powder Keg
Directed by Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu (21 Grams, Amores Perros)

The first thing that strikes you about this one is how it’s shot. Grainy, 16mm film on a handheld camera, desaturated, blown out …just lovely (thank you Robert Richardson. Again). Then, inexplicably, the story grabs you by the throat. It’s hard to tell a story in a short, as the other films in this series show, but Guillermo Ariga and David Carter have done it well, with Inarritu’s deft direction immediately putting you right there where you feel it.

It’s hard to pinpoint what exactly it is about Powder Keg that makes it work, but work it does, and how! You have a multi-layered plot — a truly multi-layered plot — acted to perfection by Owen and Stellan Skarsgard. The script hooks you with its emotional impact, be it the rounding up of the farmers in the field, the frantic run through the grass, Skarsgard’s dialogue about photograpy, the chase, the epilogue… all of it is just awesome, without ever descending into melodrama despite having every opportunity to.

This is one of the best films of the bunch. The other being…

The Follow
Directed by Wong Kar Wai (2046, Chungking Express)

The lyrical, moody quality of Wong Kar Wai’s short is beautiful. It’s a simple film about the driver following this time instead of chauffeuring, and it tells its story with such simple brilliance that at the end of it the feeling of overwhelming contentment with cinema is just palpable. This is how a film should make you feel.

Harris Savides’s cinematography is top notch, with long, lazy shots that make you feel as if you’re floating along on a cloud, and when he comes to a stop in the airport, for instance, the work just keeps getting better.
Magic stuff.

Well, that’s it. I’m definitely going to try and see these again if they ever show up online or someone has a DVD I can borrow. The best of the bunch for me are The Follow (for being just perfect), Powder Keg (for being like a punch to the face), Beat the Devil (for its outrageousness) and Ambush (for being a pure, meaty car chase done well). Ticker, Hostage, Chosen and Star don’t work as well, but each has redeeming qualities — they don’t suck, for instance, though Star comes pretty close.

I hope that BMW continues this series or at least comes up with a new one some day. The imposition of a subject that has to be there (in this case the BMW cars) leads to some interesting films from directors who would otherwise not be telling many short stories. Short films are an important form of expression, as valuable as their feature bretheren, even if it’s brought to you by a seemingly heartless commercial corporation like a car company. It would be a shame to have a world without good shorts from established feature directors.

Bravo, BMW. Can’t quite afford your cars yet (and seeing how ugly some of them have got these days, I’m not sure I want to), but thanks for the good movies.

V

Firefly 1×07 – “Out of Gas”

“When “Out of Gas” rolled around, I was faced with the somewhat disappointing feeling that I was already halfway through the series! The episode acts as a kind of cornerstone too, being a non-linear account across three time periods, showing how the ship’s crew came together…”

In preparation for the release of the movie Serenity (hopefully they’ll actually release it theatrically in this territory) I’ve been watching the series that led up to it, Firefly.

Joss Whedon’s first foray out of the Buffyverse in recent times is an odd beast: a traditional space ship drama in the style of Star Trek and Babylon 5 and countless others, but set in a distincly Old West milieu. For someone going in expecting ray guns, sound effects in the vaccuum of space and aliens (none of which appear in Firefly), the results may either be a welcome change or a jarring, perhaps even off-putting experience.

Luckily I belong to the former category, although I suspect that most people who saw it were of the latter persuasion, which eventually led to the series being cancelled. What we are left with are 13 episodes, a feature length pilot, and the Serenity movie that picks up where the series left off. Firefly joins the long, long list of SF TV series that were great — even magnificent — and pulled before their time (off the top of my head, two I can think of are Futurama and Nowhere Man). In today’s SF friendly TV climate — post Lost — one can only hope that some of these series make combacks (Futurama is getting a direct-to-DVD sequel, I hear. My inner Zoidberg rejoices. wubwubwubuwubrlaaak).

The loveliest part of Firefly as a series is that it follows the core plot structure of its distant cousins Buffy and Angel and focusses exclusively on the lead characters and their interactions rather than any convoluted external plot, unlike more traditional space-faring exploration shows like Star Trek. This might quickly turn boring in the hands of a less skilled group of writers, but Joss Whedon and Co. bring their A game to the table, and the quasi-Western setting allows them to keep things simple, keep things straight and let tried and tested archetypal stories (from both Firefly’s genres, i.e. SF and Western) be the sandbox for their wonderfully hewn characters to play.

If good writing is half the job done, then Firefly‘s cast of generally unknowns takes that finishes the job well and then some. You may have seen some of the cast before, in bit roles and small movies; Nathan Fillion who plays Captain Malcolm ‘Mal’ Reynolds was the boyfriend/husband of the titular Girl in Two Guys and a Girl for a while; Adam Baldwin played this creepy sociopath who imprisons the love of his life in his house in some TV movie I can’t remember the name of, and I can’t count the number of times Ron Glass has popped up in a TV show I’ve seen. The new faces are people I’d love to see more of (If Buffy had Willow and Angel had Fred, then Firelfy‘s resident cutie has to be Jewel Staite’s Kaley).

Only Alan Tudyk was someone I actually knew the name of going in, and that was because of his funny turn in A Knight’s Tale (“I will fong you so hard I… Pain. Terrible Pain”), and his excellent voicework in I, Robot (he played Sonny). The rest of the cast holds their own, and by the time the pilot ends you feel as if you’ve known these people for years (by the way, the Pilot ep — also titled ‘Serenity’ — features some breathtakingly good special effects, by any standard).

When “Out of Gas” rolled around, I was faced with the somewhat disappointing feeling that I was already halfway through the series! The episode acts as a kind of cornerstone too, being a non-linear account across three time periods, showing how the ship’s crew came together (those who were already on the ship at the start of the pilot, that is), an accident that cripples the ship, and a wounded Mal slowly trying to get the empty ship running again. Now, I love non-linear narratives, or concurrent back-and-forth narratives, and I’ve even tried to write them once or twice. Let me tell you, it’s a real pain in the ass. You may get everything right and the story will still be hollow and cold. Tim Minear, however, knows how to write non-linear, it would seem, as this is one of the most flawlessly written episodes of the series (I’ll admit that all the extra Chinese phrases and proprietary ‘futurespeak’ at the beginning of “Safe” rubbed my writer side wrong). It hits all the marks just right, never blowing a moment.

Visually the three stories are distinct, with the near past being Firefly‘s regular warm browns and orange glows, the present bathed in cold blues and greys, septic greens. The past, however, is awesomely colour graded, saturated and lit with lots of blacks and coloured lights. It’s a real marvel, and I wish someone would make an SF show that looked like this all the time. Further visual mastery is shown with the addition of a fourth style in the epilogue, superbly muted and evenly graded, a little desaturated but still vital.

The acting and dialogue are first rate, as always, and Mal Reynolds continues to be the kind of heroic central character other crew-em-up shows wish they had. It’s getting to be very hard to watch Nathan Fillion limply make his way through those Two Guys and a Girl reruns now, folks.

You really don’t need more to be said about this series other than a big sign that reads: WATCH THIS NOW!

I’ll be checking in with more reviews as I watch them. Hopefully by the end of the series Serenity will be in theatres here.

V

camera obscura

You’d think that Sanjay Leela Bhansali would stick to what he got successful at — the extravagant, melodramatic, ultraromantic megadrama — but instead, he goes and makes a songless film about a deafblind girl and her teacher.


So, it seems, that Indian commercial cinema is going through another phase of diversification. The last time this happened (or at least perceived by the press to have happened) was in 2001, when films like Lagaan and Dil Chahta Hai redefined what exactly it was that made an Indian film. Frankly, though Jism and all its spawn gave people the impression that the whole scene had regressed (thanks in no small part to some big budget flops from established directors like Sooraj Barjatya and Subhash Ghai), the commerical revolution in Indian cinema continued unabated. Films like Agni Varsha, Jhankaar Beats and Meenaxi continued to poke holes in the hull, but were either total flops or dismissed as that very catchy new genre, the ‘Crossover’ film.

Today, however, it’s back to the heady feeling of 2001 and the promise of globally successful Indian commercial films (read: white people — specifically Americans — must watch and like it). Surprisingly, only one film is causing this renewed buzz, and that film is Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Black.

Back in the late 90s, Bhansali’s first film was the oddly titled Khamoshi: The Musical, which involved A deaf-mute couple, their child, and, of course, Salman Khan. I can’t tell you any more because I, like many, didn’t see the film, and while it did garner critical acclaim, it didn’t do much commercially. Bhansali went on to make the much more successful films, Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam and Devdas, and firmly established Bhansali’s style of opulent sets, opulent costumes, and — to me, at least — a lot of very melodramatic acting. Hum Dil… was a nice enough film, a bit too long and a bit too angsty, but being as it was firmly within the confines of traditional commercial cinema, it fared much better than Bhansali’s first film (and thankfully gave Anil Mehta a bunch of great films to photograph, some of them being Lagaan, Agni Varsha & Saathiya).

I tried to watch Devdas. I tried to watch it many times, but could never manage more than five minutes at a time. It was just a little too theatrical and melodramatic for me, but nevertheless it was a big hit.

You’d think that Sanjay Leela Bhansali would stick to what he got successful at — the extravagant, melodramatic, ultraromantic megadrama — but instead, he goes and makes a songless film about a deafblind girl and her teacher.

Opinion has been pretty divided about Black. There are people who absolutely love it, those who absolutely hate it, and both sides spend as much time as they can trying to convince the other party that they’re right. One Black fan went so far as to take out a full page ad in a city daily urging people to see the film. Unfortunately he made the mistake of bad-mouthing a lot of (perfectly good) commerical films, and he — and Bhansali and Black by proxy — got the ire of the industry for a few days.

With all this, for lack of a better term, noise in the air, I decided to just clear my head of any pre-conceptions and go and see the film for myself (hadn’t been too interested in the first place, because the trailers were downright terrible, plus I’m not the biggest fan of the Disabled Person Triumphs genre). I’m not going to tell you the story of Black because it’s pretty much exactly as you would expect from a film like this. How it’s approached is what would make or break the film for me.

On the technical side, the cinematography (by Dil Chahta Hai and Yuva lensman Ravi K. Chandran) is top-notch, as is Omung Kumar’s production design. The film is set in some unspecified time in the 1920s and 30s, and instead of being slavish to the period the film’s sets and locations are treated with an impressionistic flourish. Sometimes it looks like a theatrical play, and a good one, at that. Monty’s (no last name given) musical score is adequate but utterly unmemorable.

The film’s performances are where the real strengths of the film lie, with pretty much everyone putting in a solid turn. About the only problem I have is with Amitabh Bachchan’s god-awful English accent. At first I tried to dismiss it as just the character being drunk during his opening scene, but soon it became apparent that this was the way the character talks; it was forced and sometimes unintelligible, especially when the character starts shouting (when all you can hear are a series of sharp hissing sounds). It’s a bit of a let-down… I mean, this is Amitabh Bachchan we’re talking about.

The film also breaks the cardinal writing rule of Show, Don’t Tell. Everything in this movie is told to you. Every single moment of the film seems pre-scripted rather than captured, every line, every action, and it doesn’t help that once in a while the film’s structure twists in such a way that it just leaves you bored. For instance, a character we only get a glimpse of in the first half reappears later and, instead of actually showing us something about this character, we get this dinner scene where she spends 5 minutes telling us about stuff that we could have seen in 30 seconds in the first half.

And that’s about it.

If you think I’m being vague about Black, not delivering the hard-hitting, conclusive ‘Yes or No’ review, then you’re right, because I had the unfortunate experience of being utterly unaffected by the film. I didn’t think it was the greatest movie ever made, nor did I think it the worst. It’s a fine enough movie when you’re watching it — some of you may even love it — but once it was over I was just… numb. I picked up my empty popcorn packet, dropped it in a bin on the way out and just walked home, pausing only for a sugarcane juice. I can tell you how the sugarcane juice made me feel, but not Black.

A month or so ago I saw The Incredibles and had much the same experience (hence I didn’t write a review for it).

I will say that Black is different from commercial Indian cinema, but I must also say that it is very much a stereotypical movie. Only it’s a stereotypical American movie, the kind that’s released in the last two months of every year and is engineered to garner a ton of awards in the following months. It is, as they say, an Oscar Bait movie, which is why it’s being touted as potentially being well received by the West.

It may be in Hindi and English and set in India, but it never feels like an Indian movie (perhaps that’s why it left me cold), and seeing as I don’t like Oscar Bait movies, I didn’t particularly like Black (or feel the need to spend 80,000 rupees on a full page ad in Mid-Day)

If you like Oscar Bait movies, do go see Black. Or don’t.

I, for one, won’t be affected either way. That’s a horrible, horrible thing for a piece of entertainment to do to you.

Vishal