Saturday, December 26, 2009
asheem joins the ocean above
Sunday, December 20, 2009
innovations in city planning
how to destroy the experience of watching a movie on the glass teat
cherubooty
PS: Was presented with a shot of an infant derriere in an ad for Mamy Poko. Is this the new secret for high TRPs?
ads and Ishqiya
A Colgate MaxFresh ad has us believe that the breath it confers is enough to make a hot ticket attendant horny. (they owe a lot to the Axe elevator ads)
A FasTrack Move On ad has the guy talking to his webcam use the word s*xy
Why, then, does the censor board have a problem with the Ishqiya promo?
Do these people even watch the shocking dross that already runs on television?
Saturday, December 05, 2009
just jhaag
- Alok Nath is alive and kicking! Good grief! The man was around rinsing emotions when we got our first television set; ThespiaNath seems to have perfected a new "bhaarii" tone and now wanders about with a thevar moustache, a brooding drooping anti-smile and a set of facial expressions that make you think he's trying to recover from having consumed a dose of laxative that is well past its expiry date (Of course it took me a while to see the most obvious reason he showed up in this show -- it's a Rajshri production; duh!)
- The script (a grandiose word for this enterprise) and dialogues were written in bullet time and filmed at 100 FPS; nothing else can account to about 15 minutes spent on close-ups, shots featuring a camera trying to adjust its focus and preposterous wide-eyed reaction shots
- The paucity of useful material is quite evident when the most significant thing that happens in 20 minutes (surrounded by zooms in, cuts to XCUs featuring gnashing teeth, appearances of faces in slow motion) is a slap. It's not a simple, effective slap. It's a completely fake exercise in sleight of hand
- These soaps owe a lot to theatre: how else can you explain the expressionist faces that support voiceovers?
- The only lighting scheme employed is what we used to refer to in college theatre as "doing it with generals" -- this means that all you do is turn on every light you have, ignoring the difference between spots and foot lights and you end up with everyone looking like a fresh candle with nary a shadow around; there's no sense of mise en scène; clearly no one looked at something like The X Files to understand how useful lighting can be
- Although it's clear that it's a work of fiction, soaps like this make an even stronger assertion: it's impossible for anyone to behave like this in real life.
Friday, November 27, 2009
itsy bits and phrases
The next time you explore someone's Picasa Web Albums after following some URL in an email, look at that innocent line below each photograph: Sign in to like this photo. It's an interesting way of trying to appear friendlier than the average note on web pages to sign in to drop comments and the like, but it has this vibe of Big Brotherly love in it.
When Sears prompts you for a user name and password for your online profile, there's a cute hint below the text box for the password warning you that Your password is cAsE SeNsItIve. It's cute but it gives me the feeling I get when I read chatspeak.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
a sight to raise you up (on the last day)
This suggests several possible things: perhaps administrative commands can only be run in a rarefied environment much like that in hill stations or up in the stratosphere or perhaps even in space (where no one can hear you installing updates); perhaps such commands require a bust uplift; perhaps one needs to be in an elevator going up to the penthouse when one attempts to effect a clearing of the DNS cache; perhaps one needs to be free of all vestiges of the disgust that one has been feeling so far -- flush with a smile.
Just give me some unbleached bathroom tissue instead.
PS: if anyone knows how to fix my problem, drop me a line. Until then don't even tell me that Windows 7 is better. Escaping with multiple fractures is likely to be preceived as better than death, but it ain't holdin' no candle to whooshing through life without a scratch.
Monday, November 16, 2009
accidental people
If you thought that was bad, consider what happened to meeting people. You may no longer meet with an accident; your efforts are no longer permitted to meet with failure or success. This is because people no longer merely meet their friends; they meet with them. Friends are accidents; friends are epitomes of success or failure. More is right. Less is ancient. Any efforts to thwart this winning streak of incorrect lard will be met with failure.
now it's 7: husband one locked in
[Cross-posted on the Vishal Bhardwaj blog]
Thursday, November 12, 2009
geekish crapspeak
Enabling developers to accomplish their common tasks with OpenXML file formats is our highest order bit.
Those of you who managed to make sense of the binary world of computers will have, no doubt, figured out that highest order bit is nothing but the most significant bit, which happens to be the bit in the position of greatest value. The number 2 gets the highest power when you get the highest order bit or the most significant bit of a binary number. In plain English (a variant on its way to extinction) this means that "Enabling developers to blah blah blah" is the most important thing for them (Now why didn't you say so?!). I can't help thinking of signed binary numbers -- the most significant bit acquires veto status, flipping the number above or below 0. Does that imply vacillation? Or "constantly changing priorities?"
On an unrelated note, does anyone know why you would want to call a zip file an installer?
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
welcome to thackerayville?
What came as a big surprise for me was my inability to find a news article that contained the title of this "guilty" film. "Danish film" made me think of Lars von Trier's latest film Antichrist, which has been the critical hot potato this year and which also qualified for a summarily dismissive stamp of "obscene." The screening schedule tells me that the film was on display. Should I just connect the dots or did I just miss the definitive news article?
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
bollywood RFC
But the promo bears the real goods. You have Om Puri's voiceover to tell you that he's probably a terrorist and this is slated to be another film in the "Bollywood 9/11" genre (see also: New York). Skip the skin and watch the captions (the scarlet fetish continues). The best one works not just as a warning to the cautious reader but also, if you think abbreviations, a tip of the hat to computer science: Feel The Pain.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
deus ex musica: kollywood kenodoxy
We turn our lens to two other people on the cast roster. The first is la femme Madhumitha (for those unfamiliar with the South Indian fetish for the 'h' as a suffix, please read this is Madhumita). She plays a lass named Sandhya who bears the conventional undiscovered great voice (aka Shreya Ghoshal). For the first half of the film, she's also our heroine. She happens to sing a song surrounded by pastoral props and that song manages to make it to a CD that plays in the car of a famous music director named Deva played, dear attentive reader, by Deva himself. Deva is also the second person, who interests us today, because he also happens to be the music director of the film; put another way, dear reader with a nose of navel-gazing nods, Deva gets to pretend to be impressed by a voice carrying a tune that he composed. It comes with complete orchestration, of course -- something that, in the world of desii-wood, you get for free (especially in farms, fields, jungles and any other place that was chosen to host a ProTools exhibition). Of course, Deva appears pleased with the discovery and makes an attempt to sign the lass up (She don't look like no Shreya Ghoshal, but she shoor sounds like 'er).Now, with your permission, dear bearer of a patient pair of eyes, I will leap across the intermission to the tail of the film, where, to our bountiful befuddlement, we find that the lass has managed to flit past all obstacles and made it to the recording studio to sing (gasp!) another of Deva's compositions. This song, dear anxious ones, is what you have been waiting for. Here is the complete unadulterated dump of the subtitles accompanying the fictitious warbling in a fictitious world.
oh friend! oh friend!
my dear friend!
touch the peak sans wings!
oh friend! oh friend!
my dear friend!
touch the peak sans wings!
oh friend! oh friend!
my dear friend!
bundle the sorrow and
throw into the fire
moon doesn't have legs
still, isn't it walking in the sky?
clouds doesn't have hands
still, isn't it swimming?
streams doesn't have a mouth
but don't they sing?
oh friend! oh friend!
my dear friend!
touch the peak sans wings!
without curves
can we climb mountains?
flowers smile even
if they live for a day
don't the kites fly sans wings?
waterfall doesn't bother for
the fall and yet it smiles
oh friend! rubber tree has
many wounds on its body
oh friend! it secretes milk
despite the wounds
whatever vanishing in the west
doesn't mean death
east has never forgotten to brighten
the stitching needle
has only one eye
it doesn't feel for its disability
but it stitches clothes
troubles are not thorns but
a ladder to a forthcoming success
even if a torch is held upside down
it would glow upwards
no heights sans sorrows
rainbow won't be visible
if you bow down
make a floor design
after the full stop
sleep with one eye until you succeed
oh friend! oh friend!
my dear friend!
touch the peak sans wings!
oh friend! oh friend!
my dear friend!
bundle the sorrow and
throw into the fire
Saturday, October 17, 2009
it's all in the details
Watching it again was thus, in several ways, quite rewarding. I have also started noticing all those little details that excite trivia-mongers: licence plates, phone numbers (both fake and the unfortunately real), posters, marquees, commercial brands (subtle product placement) and little things that pop up in the wee corner of the frame. That annoying tic surfaced during the scene when a clean-up crew arrives to "dust" the American Literary Historical Society (the cover for a CIA hub whose crew lay dead). As the van passed I noticed the name of the company: Augean Cleaning Service Inc. Although clearly a front in the context of the film, the firm probably doesn't exist in real life (Google gave me nothing). If it's an invention for the film, it's a great one. Here's why. Augean clearly refers to the King Augeas in Greek mythology, most famous for his stables that housed the most cattle in the nation. These stables were never cleaned until Hercules got his famous assignment (the 12 Labours). The fifth labour was cleaning out these stables. Now you see why the name makes sense. Bravo.
Friday, October 09, 2009
college hijinks: kollywood style
Still, Englishkaran (loosely translated: English dude, aka अंग्रेज़ीवाला) had supposedly been a big commercial hit. Since successful mainstream cinema -- be it any flavour of देसीwood -- usually promises to be rather easy on the brain and high on vacuous ambition and a misplaced sense of greatness, this movie didn't seem like a bad alternative with a pinch of iodised salt. As it turned out, the film was a minor gold mine. As a paladin of piacular pictures, I am compelled to share some of this wealth with you, dear reader. The songs make the most accessible offering. The subtitlers clearly learnt their language in some IT park and nursed lofty ambitions of being poets in the vein of an unholy union between the Romantics and Borges. Without further ado, I present, the title song. As a bonus, there's a shot at the end from a moment in the film during which a rather unusual prop makes its appearance.
these are hard, medial and nasal consonants respectively
good tamil, rich tamil, threesome tamil i can talk all types of 'tamil'
nicely
still i am an english person
whatever you can give, offer it
don't refuse whatever offer
don't advertise your wealth
don't lose confidence
shouldn't attain studies
accept criticism
disgusting!
in water scarcity
our nation is struggling
but a nursery rhyme says
'rain rain go away'
a movie song says 'digital gandhi'
movie climax would have cops coming in the end
scientists are our guys,
...go and check it
sprinkle some pepper and ...
it is said to treat sneezing problem
still i am an english person
all tamil nadu ornaments are off to speak hindi
ask the kids to sing
'best dear it is the best'
if the road side neem tree
sports a dot
an hundi is hung on it
like a fast food joint...
... egg and milk are poured into snake mounds
even if hundred periyars come...
...the nation wouldn't reform
there were 3 tamil academies earlier
but now there are umpteen caste parties
i am a chaste tamil
still i am an english person
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
logo bar, search baar baar
Saturday, October 03, 2009
nominal atavism
the turning of the phrase
A quote from Rosalind Lawton ended with "Of course, you can try to negotiate, but if it's after the fact, they have you completely over a barrel." Despite having understood what she was saying, I was curious about the phrase. It turns out to have its origins in America and means that they (she is referring to companies that hold rights to the music you want to use) have you at a disadvantage; you are helpless and in their power. Although the local flavour was welcome, I wish she had just chosen simple words instead.
Adam Fields, the producer of Johnny Be Good describes how Chuck Berry got paid $100,000 for the use of his song in the film. He starts with "We could never get in touch with him, and we were down to the wire on the movie." This is one of the numerous contributions from the world of sport and has evolved to describe a tense situation whose outcome is impossible to predict until the end.
Finally we get Jennifer Lane talking about the problems involved in getting rid of a song from the film prints. Her quote ends with a sentence that reeks of laziness: "It's a tremendous hassle financially, emotionally and timewise." Times like this make you wish "timeally" was a word (or would she have settled for "temporally"?)


