college hijinks: kollywood style

It all started with finding the wrong DVD in a case that purported to contain the digital dreck of International Khiladi. Sathyaraj doesn't look like Akshay Kumar; Namita and Twinkle Khanna are sufficiently unsuitable as lookalikes. And Tamil script does not look like English (what was the last Bollywood DVD that had devanaagarii on it?). 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

logo bar, search baar baar

Google's new logo is dedicated to the bar code. It's as good as being a tribute to The White Album or Led Zeppelin's fourth album. Two in one. Just for fun.

nominal atavism

After hitting the marquee Wake Up Sid is making news not for being a clone of Farhan Akhtar's ouevre but for having caught the ears of Raj Thackeray, the paladin of puerile pugilism and ringleader of the band of boeotian baboons called the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena. All because, predictably, for having characters in the film refer to the city now officially known as Mumbai as what it was formerly known as (Bombay). In the interest of commerce, Karan Johar rushed to make amends. MNS isn't happy and wants more. The chief minister Ashok Chavan insists that "Raj Thackeray is not a constitutional authority. Karan Johar should have come to the state government if he thought that the issue was so serious." The issue was serious and Raj Thackeray has, in the practical sense of the word, more power than most constitutional authorities (whatever that term means). After all, Raj Thackeray can still stand after pronouncing that "no film producer had the right to change the name of the city from Mumbai to Bombay."

the turning of the phrase

I finally managed to get to The Reel Truth: Everything You Didn't Know You Need to Know About Making an Independent Film, which contains lots of information about the things you have to worry about when you are trying to make your movie. I jumped right to chapter 8, which is all about what you have to do just to use your favourite song or piece of music in your film. The nuggets of trivia, however, did not grab my attention in the chapter as much as a couple of phrases I don't remember seeing before and some unfortunate examples of lazy talk and English abuse.

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"?)

from 12 to 7: vishal gets the raashee rash

If articles floating online are to be believed, Vishal Bhardwaj is working on a script called 7 Husbands and seems to have to roped Priyanka Chopra in to play 7 brides for 7 men. Since the rushes of What's Your Raashee? are mentioned, one is inclined to dismiss this as another case of striking the hot iron. Satte pe Satta becomes Ek Sati Saat Pati?

[Cross-posted on the Vishal Bhardwaj blog]

she's the man

Dil Bole Hadippa!, the latest snowball of Bollyturd from the guaniferous garden of YRF rolls down the slopes of mediocrity towards the marquee. It brings with it enough dirt to bury all the good Shahid Kapoor may have done with Kaminey, expected references to every dazzling dingleberry ever doled out by the camp in the last 20 years and enough regressive filmmaking to send us back into the Bollycaves. But what it really offers is a chance to watch Raspy Rani come out of the closet -- it's going to be a pleasant surprise to see a face (with a beard and turban to boot) to match that manly voice. This might be a welcome change after the scary visages of Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic (very very tragic).

the third rogue

Who else but the director of the Tamil remake of that royal star vehicle to helm the Hindi remake? Prabhu Deva is all set to start his Bollywood chargesheet with Salman Khan replacing The Prince and Joseph Vijay and Ayesha Takia (who had declined the role in the Telugu original) replacing Ileana D'Cruz (she with the strange hips) and Asin (Suryaamir) Thottumkal. Topless Khan seems like the perfect star to take the place of that smirking stylistically misguided missile of ineptitude.

The soundtrack's not as rewarding as the promos. There's the promo that boasts some great voiceovers over what is otherwise a standard issue trailer showcasing a star, a pretty face, nauseatingly bland stylised action intercut with more nauseatingly bland stylised action and the obligatory dance sequences.

he walks casually
he talks casually
he eats casually
he loves casually
he kills casually
but (pronounced: buh -- rhymes with 'duh' -- T) he dances seriously

मुझे खुद को भी नहीं पता कि मैं कितना कमीना हूँ is the kind of line that would never have made it to Vishal Bhardwaj's film.

The second trailer's the official high-quality loud monster that features font styles that might fit well in video games and graphic novels (in fact, all the stills seem like they came from pages of some violent graphic novel). It opens with agonising an blinky-winky display of shots with ASLs that you would need a vernier calliper to measure. Lack of content tossed at you at the speed of constipated humming birds. The South Indian spelling bug takes over as you are told that it's a Prabhu Dheva film. That the action director is someone called Vijayan is quite obvious when you see goons spinning into the air on a semi-vertical axis after being punched. But the best is yet to come. You realise that the filmmakers have sprung a conceptual coup. This film is not merely a remake of a brain-dead actioner. It happens to be a showcase for Bollywood's version of a human transaction manager -- one that will leaving CICS, MTS and Tuxedo light years behind. It is all clear when you hear the last line on the trailer.

एक बार जो मैंने commitment कर दिया उसके बाद तो मैं खुद की भी नहीं सुनता

reel me this, reel me that

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore [October 22, 2006]: From the opening sequence (a bleeding Technicolor 1.33:1 frame within the 1.85:1 frame offering a rather wicked version of Dorothy in Kansas with a tip no doubt to Douglas Sirk as well) to the restrained optimism of the end, this film is a showcase for great performances (led by Ellen Burstyn whose Alice is a fascinating study of the steadfast, determined American woman who hasn't lost her sense of humour) and for Martin Scorsese's enthusiastic mix of a variety of techniques: filters, tracking shots, a nuanced choice of songs on the soundtrack, movie references -- The Postman Always Rings Twice -- and showpiece scenes (my favourite one is Vera's bad day intercut with Alice and Flo talking about Alice's problems). The DVD also has another rarity -- a commentary track featuring Martin Scorsese (it is always a pleasure to hear him fire one exuberant salvo of words after another).

Waitress [October 01, 2008]: It's not hard to be reminded of Scorsese's film when watching Keri Russell in a fantastic performance as Jenna Hunterson. The film's trailer was an exceptionally good one (the kind that piques your interest in a film instead of being a showcase of the best bits of a piece of creative guano). It was only several months later that I settled down with the DVD in the player. The film confidently mixes the essence of a chick flick with a compassionate study of characters and humanity laced with broad strokes of whimsy and constant cheer. Unfortunately, the senseless murder of Adrienne Shelly has robbed us of a filmmaker who seemed poised to offer so much more.

what is dev benegal up to?

(If you've been following Dev Benegal's blog, you already know)

The man who helmed that fine cinematic adaptation of Upamanyu Chatterjee's English, August years ago and the under-sung darkly funny Split Wide Open has been struggling for years to get a DVD of the film out. Despite several posts that promised salvation and some that were quite depressing, a post appeared with a ray of hope. This, of course, comes amid posts dedicated to his new film Road, Movie (that comma seems like a tribute to the Madna movie) starring the ever-adventurous Abhay Deol. There's a teaser for those interested. Those lucky enough to be in attendance at the Toronto International Film Festival on September the 18th are even luckier.

[october 07, 2009]: Another trailer's up -- it's a montage of moments after we get the general idea that our protagonist is out to discover himself. I don't see anything extra being revealed; and I love that background score.

the successful tamperer

The recent release of Tere Bagair on the YRF Music label marked yet another success for Sanjeev Kohli, the son of the late Madan Mohan, who has made a name for himself as a Lucasian archaeologist. Digging through HMV's cavernous vaults, he unearthed many a rarity (including several not-so-rare elements made "rare" simply thanks to the myopic dullards running the shop) and converted them into compilations for release. These compilations were often marred by the liberties taken with the source material -- musical prologues, interludes and outros were summarily clipped to make way for more songs on a single cassette or CD; faders were twirled arbitrarily to produce a continuous stream of music rendered creatively unsatisfying thanks to being tampered with. The crown jewel of this series of commercial ventures came with the Revival series, where present-day session players and hacks were unleashed on the creative output of acknowledged greats from the Golden and Silver ages of music (don't you love those anachronistic soulless synthesizer motifs?).

There are hints of foul play in the taglines on the cover: a rare treasure ... 15 unreleased songs revived and digitally mastered in 2009. The word revived when Sanjeev Kohli is nearby can mean only one thing. More evidence comes from two places.

The first is this bit of text below the track list:

all songs composed and recorded by madan mohan during his lifetime
these songs were from shelved films between 1964 and 1972
instruments added in 2009 to enhance the quality of old recordings

The second is the credit for additional musicians in the inlay sheets (Incidentally, technical supervisor Victor Dantes was a comrade-in-arms in a similar successful experiment called the "Legends" series).

This is what happens when you have people with insufficient technical chops to pull off a remastering job. One must also credit the purchasing majority that doesn't really care.

An interview with Sanjeev Kohli posted over at PFC contained some revelatory comments from the man himself. Here is what was said on the subject of the reverbs and other confetti added to the tracks:

I have one serious complaint against the ‘Legends’ series of music compilations. I feel that by adding reverb, the digitized songs on these CDs lost their rich depth of original vocals and acoustic orchestration. They sound hollow!

You are right in your observation. But the reverb effect was added to nullify the hiss and scratchy sounds of old records. That does muffle the sound a bit but the general public seemed to have liked the sound! Perhaps the connoisseurs might feel differently about it.

Earlier in the interview, Kohli talks about Tere Bagair (I have taken the liberty of emphasising the portions of interest for you, O patient reader)

Now the new album- 'Tere Bagair' (released by Yashraj Music) will present all the ten songs from 'Treasure Unrevealed' in full, extended versions and it will also have five more tracks originally recorded by Madan Mohan. This album will be a treat not only for the fans of Madan Mohan but also for the fans of singers like Lata, Asha, Rafi and Kishore because they will get an opportunity to experience many original Madan Mohan recordings in their favourite singer's voice. Moreover these songs were previously either unreleased or inaccessible. Even those listeners who had already heard 'Treasure revealed' would find many new things in 'Tere Bagair'. The recording quality of the album is excellent since the master tapes have been used to reproduce the songs. In some songs, I have re-recorded the tabla tracks and added some harp sounds but even that is done in such a way that it would perfectly fit in the sound of the 60s, when those songs were originally recorded.
You can't compare 'Tere Bagair' to 'Veer Zaara' because ' Tere Bagair' is an album of out and out Madan Mohan originals whereas in 'Veer Zaara', his tunes were modified to suit the times and also the film's requirements.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a man of commerce talking.

stereotypes on the streets of Pune

(being an unpolished draft from a visit back home several months ago)

There is a reason Pune roads are never going to get better no matter how many flyovers you build, no matter how many streets you convert to one-way traps, no matter how many regulations you prescribe on termite-eaten papers of law, no matter how much you try to subvert the laws of physics with the power of unenforced law. That reason, dear hapless smoke-ingesting, Brownian reader is the rich and variegated set of stereotypes of riders and commuters unleashed on the streets of Pune. This helpless spectator presents a few.
The Light Brigade: Even if Tennyson's poem loses its impact because people no longer cared about the Crimean war, it would survive thanks to finding another image in the real world –- this is the critical mass revving up near a traffic signal awaiting the change from red to green desperately like the incontinent in search of a ceramic throne. Even before the chromatic switch, a deluge of multimodal impatience sweeps the intersection and intersecting streets. It's the chariot race from Ben Hur duplicated across space and time.

Neo wannabes in the Metropolitan Matrix: You're familiar with the commuters who behave as if they had received an internal memo saying they were Neo Anderson and that they were the One. Assuming all surrounding traffic to represent the Matrix, these people waltz across crowded intersections (causing even graver deadlocks), shimmy through cracks between cars, along invisible tracks connecting the front wheel of a scooter to the rear wheel of a motorcycle making a game of snakes and ladders look like an exercise in drawing perfectly straight lines.

reel notes from long ago

(Being another little collection of thoughts about films viewed months and years ago)

Equilibrium [December 29, 2006]: This tale of dystopia chooses to be a thriller instead of exploring familiar ideas like the suppression of emotion using drugs (Brave New World's soma -- an idea seen in movies like THX 1138 -- becomes Prozium, a portmanteau of Prozac and Valium), the destruction of art (just books in Fahrenheit 451) and the totalitarian state that is constantly monitoring its people (1984). It chooses to be an action thriller and a showcase of Gun Kata. I liked Gun Kata and that's the sole reason I have to watch Ultraviolet some day. Christian Bale does no wrong with the character of John Preston both in the dramatic and the action sequences. Another William Butler Yeats poem makes it to the canon of sci-fi/apocalyptic films. Knowing about Tetragrammaton helps, as does finding out why that fight sequence in Aan: Men at Work looked so familiar.

Eye of the Needle [August 06, 2006]: This, as far as I can tell, is the only adaptation of a Ken Follett novel for the big screen. It also happens to be directed by Richard Marquand, who, thanks to this film, was chosen to direct Return of the Jedi, the most famous film in his ouevre. I had enjoyed reading the book years ago and still remembered the essential narrative elements when I finally got down to watch Donald Sutherland lead a strong cast in a competent well-paced cinematic adaptation. The camera angles and the editing seem representative of the 70s, even though the film was released in 1981. When Sutherland bumps into a motorcycle near a station building, I loved the cut to the sound of the bike as the camera follows the countryside he is riding through. I also noticed the not-so-uncommon technique of allowing scenes top open with sounds from the previous scene. Both elements are probably examples of "the hook" (see also: a lovely essay on this by David Bordwell). Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince gets some great promotion here when Faber reads from it to little Jo. Miklós Rózsa's score, unfortunately, amplifies the attempt of the production to sound and feel very monumental; the dramatic appeal of the domestic conflict suffers as a consequence. A minimalist score exploring the various emotional textures of a few motifs might have been a better companion. Those familiar with either this film or Follett's source novel will have noted the unacknowledged debt Fanaa's second half owed to this film (with a few necessary alterations for the film to go down well with national lovers of such ingenuous cinema and nostalgic NRIs dying to throw their dollars at paeans to trite familial ideals and values). Ironically, a few years later, Marquand helmed another film, which served as carrion for the rapacious rodins of Bollywood -- the film was called Jagged Edge and we all know it well as Kasoor (in which Aftab Shivdasani became Jeff Bridges and Lisa Ray became Glenn Close).

Alag [August 05, 2006]: Powder is transmogrified into a Bollyversion seasoned with all the delicacies that make a Bollywood movie suck -- the Hindi/English nonsense mix (say it in English; now say it in Hindi; now mix 'em up), retrograde exposition (A scientist from California!) and irritating song breaks (apun kii Tolii deserves an award and a place in the Hall of Non Sequitur Shame). Plaudits must be reserved for the "story" credited to Tagore Almeida (lovely name that) and a "screenplay" churned out by Almeida and director Ashu Y. Trikha. The film tries to be a showcase for Akhay Kapoor's "talents" (he can dance! he can brood! but can he act?) and a breeding ground for bad subtitles (सिंह becomes "singh" and माहिया वे राँझना वे becomes "lover ... ranjhana! you are only my home!"). When the subtitles on the DVD got stuck, the people at the Indian store whence this VHS rip came from were kind enough to stop the DVD player and hit play again to fix the problem (the evidence was recorded for all you caring customers). It's also an exhibition of bad editing (like most Bollywood films) and a slavish adoption of technique without just cause (shoot me in bullet time!). It also had a hidden lure which drew a host of Bollywood A-listers to feature in a song at the end (this is your cheapest opportunity to see Shah Rukh Khan, Karan Johar, Abhishek Bachchan, Arjun Rampal, Bipasha Basu, Lara Dutta, Bobby Deol, Priyanka Chopra and Preity Zinta). But the film truly belongs to Tom Alter's bid for a Razzie for Worst Actor in a Foreign Film as Doctor Richard Dyer, the villain of the piece claiming to be a crusader against epilepsy, Parkinson's Disease, Alzheimer's and पागलपन. Watch him as he deliciously mouths inane phrases like "Human mind," proclaims himself "The greatest genius in the entire universe" and delivers pronouncements like "Emotion Revolution का दुश्मन है"). That, a decent opening title sequence and abuse of the Doom fireball sound make this film worth your while (barely). I leave you with a priceless piece of dialogue from the film:

tejas (akshay kapoor): क्या हम थोड़ी देर रुक सकते हैं?
purvaa (dia mirza): हाँ , sure, brake है न गाडी में

what a big search box you have!

And I thought my eyes were playing tricks! Even though I use the Firefox Search Bar for my Google searches, I still see the search text box on the page of results. Last night, the text box and that "Search" button looked bigger. I thought I had accidentally hit "Ctrl and +" as I am wont to on occasion. It turns out that this was a little flourish from the owners of that recently granted patent.

bollywood's chameleon car

Despite its lofty meta-cinematic ambitions, Tashan manages to bore you out of your wits while also tossing one delicious gaffe after another. The continuity department was out smoking maTakaa while reels of footage were captured, digitally created and spliced into specious brouhaha. In this post we consider one of the most visible paws of the fox starring one of the two most important vehicles in the film. It's a red beauty of ambiguous parentage and schizophrenic identity.

The film opens with a red mercedes SLK 320 on the wild road accompanied by a stereo switching between a little ode to 80s rock ("She's a highway to hell" courtesy Ranjit Barot) and kabhii kabhii (the plaintive voice of the late Mukesh).

It's a red Mercedes SLK 320 with a spoiler. UGR 9403.

And then it veers out of control and drives off the road, to the side and over the edge. The landscape looks fake, the milestone flying by is bad CG. But the worst is yet to come. A montage of obviously fake VFX shots follows to illustrate the inevitable -- the descent of the car succumbing to gravity into the water below.

It's at this point that things become confusing. The car's licence plate goes into the witness protection programme in midair relocating, in a manner of registration, to the state of Maharashtra.

A fine shot of the automobile's derriere laced with dust is marred by the word embossed on the rear bumper. I'm confused -- when did Ford team up with Mercedes?

Several minutes later, we return to the car under water.

The licence plate continues to be the same as it was before the car hit the water. It is also clear that the car is an SLK 320; I can't see lower part of the bumper, so it's hard to see if the embossed Mustang is still there (I wish I had a better angle).

Peculiar. Very peculiar.

Since this is a film laced with references to other films (with, as a later blog post may reveal, the choice of films bears a strong bias for the Yash Raj canon) and especially recent YRF productions, it is possible to construe an explanation for this gaffe and credit it as being a little in-joke. Remember the Mustang fetish in Dhoom? Remember especially that red set of wheels bearing the likes of Esha Deol? That, kemo sabe, was a Mustang. Perhaps bhaiyaajii created his own motor mash-up (Benz+Ford = Bored?). Or perhaps we're just dealing with an overpaid sloppy crew obsessed with bringing fruition to an overbaked balloon of nothing built on an idea that deserved a creative mind.

blunt beaks and stellar opposition

What compels the majority of Indian writers of English to abuse the word against in various blog posts, paid articles and various parochial portals? Does not the damage implied by the collision worry them? Do they fail to appreciate the use of opposite instead? How does one explain some random actress appearing against a superstar? Was it a game of tennis? Was it sumo wrestling? Was it a game of cards? Was it arm wrestling? Or was it squash? It seems to be none of these, for the "writers" (who really have no business wielding the pen in the language) choose this word to mean that said starlet was appearing along with said superstar. They're on the same team, on the same side. Talk about dushaasan appearing against duryodhan in the mahaabhaarat. It's time to rally against the opposition.

a blast of bappi

As we lament the passing of an age of lyrical dross so bad it was hilarious, let us pause to shower laurels on one such master stroke in the late 90s from the jewel-clad master. Boppi-da ensured the cult credentials of the Sunil Shetty/Jeetendra law and odour flick Judge Mujrim with Jolly Mukherjee belting out lailaa o lailaa. Was this Boppi-da's tribute to the Shah brothers? Perhaps we will never know. Meanwhile, we can surely sit back and relish the interplay of language, the blending of metaphors in this abbatoir of rhyme embellished with the obligatory bridge of rap. Presented below is the "neat" version of the song (no repetitions, no loops)

हम तुम दोनों मिल गए
प्यार की tuning हो गयी
हर morning तेरी हो गयी
हर evening तेरी हो गयी

लैला हो लैला तू है लैला
छैला मैं छैला मैं तेरा छैला

आ हा नज़र क्या तेरी है
आ हा कमर क्या तेरी है
आ हा अदा क्या तेरी है
आ हा उम्र क्या तेरी है

आ हा ये गाल टमाटर से
आ हा ये होंठ गाजर से
आ हा तू बोतल शरबत की
आ हा टू गोरी पनघट की

तेरे रूप की बिजली से
मेरे दिल में lighting हो गयी

आ हा तू गुडिया जापानी
आ हा तू परियों की रानी
आ हा तू चाँद पूनम का
आ हा तू कतरा शबनम का

आ हा छलकता जाम है तू
आ हा सुनहरी शाम है तू
आ हा तू model 96
आ हा तू गोरी गोरी miss

मेरे दिल के garden में
तेरे प्यार की कलियाँ खिल गयीं
हर morning तेरी हो गयी
हर evening तेरी हो गयी

kaminey: genesis

[in which it is obvious that I've seen the film]

be warned that some elements herein may be regarded as spoilers

Kaminey opens with very little of the dross that inundates most Bollywood releases these days. The dross comprises acknowledgements to various media partners, outdoor partners, brand partners, various names both familiar and unfamiliar, miscellaneous logos and the like (My Name Is Anthony Gonsalves might have set a new record with about 1 minute and 54 seconds of such sycophantic fellatio before the film's title came up).

Vishal's film opens with an acknowledgement to Mira Nair and the Maisha Film Lab in Kampala. Then there are two screens of names (including familiar ones like Abhishek Chaubey) after which we get a screen proclaiming "UTV Motion Pictures presents." The next screen bears the interesting "based on an idea by Cajetan Boy."

Maisha is the brainchild of Mira Nair and aims to be "a film makers laboratory dedicated to developing and supporting visionary screenwriters and directors from East Africa and South Asia." The first lab for screenwriters was held in Kampala, Uganda from August 3rd to August 13th, 2005. The mentors for the workshop were Mira Nair, Matthew Robbins, Vishal Bhardwaj, Steve Cohen, Sabrina Dhawan, and Sooni Taraporevala. Vishal fans will probably recognise the name of Matthew Robbins. One of the 10 screenplays chosen for the workshop was titled Roho and it was written by a Kenyan named Cajetan Boy. Vishal had more in an interview:

Where did Kaminey originate? Was it an incident or a film or a book that inspired you?
Four years ago, Mira Nair assembled writers from America, India and Canada to mentor ten students from Asia and Africa. This scriptwriting workshop was held in Kampala, Yuganda[sic]. A young writer from Nairobi showed me a script which was a story about twin brothers and what happens in their life in a span of 24 hours. It was like parallel cutting and I really liked that approach. Mira and I spoke about it at length and both of us felt that it was a typical Bollywood masala movie. I was in touch with that writer for the next six months. He also sent me another draft. Then two-three years later I asked him to sell me the idea. He was in need of money so I sent him some 4000 dollars and bought the script to make any time. I picked up that idea and added Bollywood masala and my dark and serious side to it. So now, one brother stammers and the other has a lisp.

Vishal didn't stop with merely adding the disabilities, the wide array of colourful characters, his trademark dialogue and the other elements reinforcing his belief in the utility of Bollywood conventions in interesting ways. He also tossed in a credit for Cajetan Boy. And that was not all -- Vishal decides to use the name Cajetan for one of the many characters in his tapestry. This gets us more than a couple (if memory serves me right) of utterances of the name. It is also a credited appearance, so we read the name in the end credits (those who stomped over all the popcorn on the floor the moment the dissolve to black happened can pretend they saw this).

The film's merits notwithstanding, this is one of those simple yet masterful gestures that makes people like Vishal stand out in a sea full of plagiarising halfwits and mendacious morons.

Cajetan, one is happy to report, is pleased with all this.

makes sense and whatever

being a collection of news crumbs about developments that can be explained, are unfortunate and yet predictable (given my cheery cynical disposition) -- things only make me go "what else could I expect?"

Celebrate India's Independence with another round of the twin-blade sword from MARTA -- that's route cuts combined with a fare increase, dearies. The usual reasons unfold -- the refusal of those who manage the affairs of the state to give more than lip service to the importance of public transit being the most familiar. MARTA had done this a few years ago; the consequences are easily explained -- even fewer people will consider trying transit worth their while; even fewer people will see it as a way to save money; the transit system's sole saving grace continues to be the train (and the airport is the most important destination). CCT, meanwhile, continues to remain a 6-day affair, taking time off on Sundays. This continues to a lot of streets in the county viable as locations for I Am Legend: II. Oh, and before I forget, fares will go up by a quarter on the eve of Gandhi Jayanti. Surely some celebrations must be organised at the Martin Luther King Centre (you can take the train).

After promising to fix the much-abused and rather pathetic immigration system and policies of the USA during his campaign and after assuming office, President Barack Obama has rescheduled it for 2010. The current blockbuster is the healthcare (such a contradiction in terms) system. David and Goliath, ladies and gentlemen. I appreciate any effort to make the system more meaningful and useful instead of resembling something like outtakes from Brazil, but being the well-meaning cynic that I am, I'll wait till something happens. Meanwhile, the insurance companies will continue to run as well-oiled businesses funded by the healthy and denied to the sick.

As for all you people out there working with an H-1B and an honest résumé (if you're one of those douchebags with dilated credentials furnished by brethren from the back offices, please ignore this and drink from a can of expired milk) -- rest assured that the government will accept all your money through various agencies. The government also offers faster service at a higher price (remember H-1B renewals, I-140 applications?) -- which makes one wonder what they were doing when offering regular service that took so long.

The rant has ended. Go in peace to shed some more dead presidents.

kaminey: early praise

Vishal Bhardwaj seems destined to be the guinea pig for all sorts of strange SNAFUs associated with film releases. Anurag Kashyap's problems were limited to censor bans. But the creative and talented Mr. Bhardwaj has had to deal with obscurity (Maqbool seems to have gained its admirers and fans almost completely by word of mouth and the occasional articles lavishing praise), hype dying with a whimper (a lot more was written about The Blue Umbrella before it finally hit the marquee, at which point it seemed to slide all the way out), strangely disappointing initial collections followed by a backlash of prudery (Omkara). And now it's the H1N1 wave that has prevented it from hitting the marquee back home in Bombay and Pune. The film has hit the marquee overseas and, as with Omkara, seems destined to get most of its early reviews from abroad (local limited screenings for critics notwithstanding).

And the early notes are promising. Nay! They are extremely encouraging in an eerie way. Raja Sen ends his enthusiastic take with Awefome!; Another positive review ends with praise for the director; Nikhat Kazmi gives it a full-star rating before gushing about it as does the Indian Express and Vasan Bala is drooling over at PFC. Anupama Chopra, writing for NDTV, starts by calling it the best Bollywood film she's seen this year. Taran Adarsh, the reviewer from hell, who pretends to be a critic while looking at films like a baniyaa, also has good things to say, ending with four stars out of five. Lisa Tsering (reportedly "the first Western journalist to write about Bollywood and Indian pop culture for the Indian press") calls it a smart vivid thriller. Baradwaj appreciates Vishal's respect for the audience's intelligence as he unfurls a favourable review. Rajeev Masand gives "this imaginative and original film" four stars out of five. Over at The Hindu, Sudhish Kamath is "dying to watch it again." Minty Tejpal loves the film (adding a disclaimer that he worked with Vishal on the screenplay of The Blue Umbrella) and can't get the tune out of his head.

And if you thought I was just looking at the good notes, allow me to offer Khalid Mohamed's take (the guy can't even spell "Bhardwaj" right, though).

[Cross-posted on the Vishal Bhardwaj blog]

mind it! see it!

It started in 1993 or 1994 with shorts on Channel [V] featuring a South Indian cowboy mouthing lines and attitude reminiscent of Rajnikant, but with an attitude of his own. The cowboy became an unbeatably original icon of Indian pop/pulp culture and Shashank Ghosh was famous. Well, to be precise, Quick Gun Murugan was famous and Shashank Ghosh was a name that rang a bell for credit watchers and trivia-mongers.

Years later, Ghosh made his first full length feature, Waisa Bhi Hota Hai, Part II, an irreverant undersung darkly comic tale of Bombay, the underworld, urban angst, pop fantasies and Bollywood clichés, machismo and the first time we heard of Rabbi Shergill. It was destined to become a cult favourite.

Several years later, word floats about a full-length feature adventure of everyone's favourite South Indian cowboy. Then Shashank Ghosh started blogging on PFC. And then, the film sprang out on screen at IFFLA 2009 and the reviews indicated that all was well.

And now, the trailers have flooded the Internet. Rajendra Prasad with his Sivaji Ganesan looks mouths lines destined to be immortal (I am cowboy / this is my duty); there are odes to The Terminator, Rajnikant and his physics-defying sticks of nicotine, there are tips of the hat to Vijaykant (can you go wrong with these two? you can't!) and the priceless resounding ballast from Tridev:

[hindi version]
करमभूमी मेरा आँगन (आँगन (आँगन (आँगन (आँगन ))))
terrace मेरा नील गगन (गगन (गगन))
ये पूरा दुनिया मेरा वतन (वतन (वतन (वतन (वतन ))))

my name is मुरुगन
क्विक गण मुरुगन

[english version]
the (दे) earth (यर्त) is my bed (bed (bed (bed (bed))))
the sky is my ceiling
the whole creation is my native place

my name is murugan
quick gun murugan

The theatrical trailer snags immortality with the coolest pair of intertitles in a while (they made him a past tense / now he will make their future tense).

There's Nasser as the deliciously named villain, Rice Plate Reddy; Rambha as Mango Dolly and Raju Sundaram as Rowdy MBA. Watch out for Ranvir Shorey and Vinay Pathak. The ears are already licking their drums in glee. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

mind it!

Here are the original shorts to watch while you wait: number 1, number 2 and number 3.

update [august 10, 2009]: Siddhartha graciously points me to a video of Mika's song for the film. Ostentatious! ये है rebel without a cow is a stroke of staggering genius.

boppi-da kaa naam: only boppi-da

This is for JR, whose instant message unleashed an investigation of old LP cover scans and the stash of guilty pleasures with Bollywood's own Maaikaal Jeksaan at the composing helm.

It all started with an instant message and a pointer to a post over at PFC dedicated to Bollywood songs with crazy lyrics (the kind of stuff that can keep a blog running for eons, mates). The fragment of interest was:

For the uninitiated it would be interesting to note that Bappida used the pseudonym Basavalingaiah Hiremath when he sang his songs like Jeele le Jee le and I am a Disco Dancer !!

I'm not one of those Bappi fans who keeps a little altar in the house of the portly plagiarist adorned with gold chains and cheap sunglasses, but his ouevre has been a guilty pleasure -- he has betrayed flashes of brilliance and balanced them with buckets of mediocrity. Toss in a zany accent, a penchant for outrageous lyrics and a warped sense of cool and we get one of the most unique personalities stomping about Bollywood. But I digress. The point is: I've never heard about this pseudonymous business. I have images of the record covers of Tarzan and Chalte Chalte; I have a CD compilation that includes the songs of Disco Dancer; I have several other compilations and record scans of other soundtracks and none (I repeat none) of them choose any appellation other than Bappi Lahiri (the stray Bhappi Lahiri notwithstanding). A fellow Bopper agrees. Unfortunately, it has been quite impossible to find out how this rumour started. It's hard to believe that the real Basavalingaiah Hiremath (a Kannada singer?) indulged in this bit of inspired publicity. The Wikipedia page dedicated to the man cites the results of a Google search as evidence. Pah!

I think it's time for Bappi to sue again.

that's what it's all about

I wonder why the verbs mention and discuss were robbed of their transitive status. What could have encouraged someone to completely ignore a free spot for the object and choose to make their own along with the preposition about as a prefix. People have decided to stop discussing things and have started discussing about them -- if you want a ghastly visual to match this, please consider Rajesh Khanna and Nanda cavorting about an unidentified garden in The Train. People have stopped mentioning things and have decided to mention about them -- circumlocutory chaos once again. We've got enough wasted clones of that preposition to fill several galaxies. Trim your utterances and sentences; make them a word lighter. There are places where it will be happier. Think about it.

a-tishoo (Dhishum)

[link courtesy: Siddhartha]

a rose is a rose
a nose is a nose
a toese is a toese

Ditching his cap didn't do much for him (his asphyxiated hair might have breathed gulps of relief, however). A tail of numerologically sound, linguistically challenged onomatopoeiac titular adjustments didn't help either. The bearer of the only voice known to offer serious competition to Madame Mangeshkar's silicate shattering sonance has gambled on another attempt to stupefy his fans, extend the destructive reach of his olfactory astra and gone down to South Africa (inspired by the mondegreen that Prem Granth was really Prem Grunt, no doubt) and funded the addition of a new voice to his laryngeal catalogue:

Himesh has quietly put himself through surgery a couple of months ago and added one more voice, apart from his nasal voice. He has now become the only singer to have two completely different voices and the new voice will be heard in his forthcoming films. He has already recorded songs in his new voice.

Watch out for the next edition of the Sneeze Book of World Records.

Those with a knowledge of music theory and acoustics will find something to relish in the utter fiction of the details of the operation:

Apart from his nasal voice, he has now added a different voice which is a base middle octave. This way, he will have two distinct voices and anybody who indentifies him with his style will never be able to say that the other voice is also his.

If anyone knows what base[sic] middle octave means, please drop me a line or drop a comment hereabouts. Meanwhile, we will await the stridulations consequent of the soniferous surgical stint. merii.n aa.Nwaa.Nze.n su.Nno.n!

the origins of a tribute to armaan kohli?

Unknown [May 06, 2007]: There were two reasons I can think of that made me sit and watch Unknown, when a friend had unearthed the film. The first was that it was, for me, just like the title said (I hadn't heard of it, dummy). The second was that it had Jim "They Call Me Jesus" Caviezel. It seemed like a good thing to find out what else he had been in before he was crucified forever. The film's premise was interesting: a few men wake up in a warehouse with no memory of who they are and what has brought them here. If you wanted a high concept version, think Reservoir Dogs meets Memento meets The Usual Suspects. Things are reasonably engaging but there are plot holes that might compete with the Grand Canyon. There's also a certain ebb in the pace at times. However, given that this was a relatively minor flick, there was no hype to damage my reaction and define expectations for me. It also turned out that Caviezel was not the only familiar name on the roster -- one also had Greg Kinnear, Joe Pantoliano and Peter Stormare.

[the present] Perhaps what kept me from writing about this film two years ago was someone like the Traveller, who whispered into my ear telling me that I wasn't alone in having seen this minor flick. There was another way of describing this film for the high concept crowd: Think Kaante with a twist. Woo hoo! Lo! After having received a tenured position at Sanjay Gupta Cine-Copiers LLC with the variegated Ek Khiladi Ek Hasina, Suparn Varma announced his next directorial venture -- a film called Acid Factory. As a title, this fit the kind of stuff Sanjay Gupta blessed. The teaser trailer sports the familiar tropes of the Gupta school of filmmaking -- leather-clad alpha male figures, chases, automobile crash ballets with pirouettes to put the worst Bollywood physics to shame. But it's the premise -- something that is hardly evident in the teaser -- that gives it all away:

[from the official page]
Acid Factory is about a group of characters whose sense of past has vanished in a haze of coma like sleep they have woken up from only to discover that reality could be a figment of their imagination.
[...]
Five men wake up inside the stolid confines of a factory to find themselves locked in this claustrophobic nowhere land.

The page continues to reveal more plot details than you would like to know, if you were planning to watch Unknown. But if it's a Bolly-flick you are interested in, plot hardly matters. You're in it for the obeisance to testosterone, for the objectification of the female form, for the coolness of moronic utterances, for the cheap version of a Michael Bay soundscape. The warehouse becomes the titular entity, while Moynahan becomes Mirza in what looks like another unholy ripoff. It's the 21st century and for every No Smoking, Johnny Gaddaar, 15 Park Avenue, Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi and Dil Dosti, Etc, we still get stuff like this on which star power, cash and kind are showered. Time to return to Streets of Fire ... oops Tezaab. Oh well. Perhaps that old Armaan Kohli classic then. Here are a few tablets to revive your memory, O lover of Bollycrap: hamanashii.n, mai.n kaun huu.N and kitanaa pyaar tumhe.n karate hai.n

a handful of scribbles

Pokiri [December 11, 2006]: With RGV written all over it, this Mahesh Babu vehicle can appeal only to fans of "Prince." The film is so obsessed with style and the coolness of its star (something that, again, is something only the privileged fanatic masses can see) that it ends up being a parody of its excess. The plot has something to do with the land mafia, but it's mostly about the Prince. Those with an eye for feminine eye candy can spend time analysing the oddities of the bone structure and hip dynamics of Ileana D'Cruz. The songs mix Telugu and Hindi and even features Bollywood staple Kunal Ganjawala on one track. One song adds to the list of Listen to the pouring rain rip-offs. There's a villain who's into S and M. There's some sliding on the knees to get past under a rolling spinwheel. There are surreal lines like I may not be perfect but parts of me are awesome and strange subtitles (s*x-straved[sic] vampires). Don't wait for the Hindi remake; watch the original. Be warned: the DVD was designed by the usual gang of morons, so there's a lot of unskippable content. Use something like VLC on your laptop instead of a regular DVD player to reduce your grief.

Enduring Love [December 18, 2006]: The first movie adapting Ian McEwan (The Good Son doesn't count, because there was no source novel) that I saw taught me what an au pair was. The film opens with a death that's shocking because it happens on a clear innocuous day and in a very matter-of-fact way (since I hadn't read the novel, I had the benefit of ignorance as far as the plot was concerned). A sense of Rashomon and emotional confusion take over as the film walks the thin line between drama and thriller. Nice chilling use of God Only Knows and some interesting use of slow motion followed by quick edits and frenzied camera angles and lenses and sped-up film as Joe rushes home when he finds out that Jed is there with Claire. Watch out the book Awakening The Buddha by Lama Surya Das (yes, LSD). Bland font for the end credits, however. The film's confusion of intent prevents it from being either an engaging psychological experience (something really welcome given the earnest performances) or a less unsubtle version of Fatal Attraction.

The Score [September 21, 2006] (aka 317 946 5839): This film will most likely be remembered more for who was in it rather than what they did in it or the plot. It's about a con with none of the surprises being surprises, peppered with the obligatory yet implausible heist sequence, packed with material for actors to riff with and yet not terribly exciting. The prospect of seeing Robert De Niro and Marlon Brando finally work together and of seeing Edward Norton hold his own foil with these two fine sabres doing their thing is not done justice by a film that only works in parts. One wishes that David Mamet had been involved in scripting stuff for Norton and De Niro; I can't think of anyone who could write anything for the colossal and shockingly unpredictable temperamental Brando. Scenes seem to work simply because we find ourselves watching good actors do their stuff, but the material isn't much up to snuff. You can appreciate some good lighting work by Rob Hahn. The film, however, seems to want to succeed more as a by-the-numbers gadget-laden caper than as something that George Roy Hill might have been at ease with. Oh, did I forget to note that Angela Bassett's here too, wasting her time. Get your kicks by spotting Quake III: Arena.

oil be damned!

Why am I not surprised that someone named Ramnarain Sahu, a Samajwadi party MP, who happens to be the president of the Rashtriya Teli Rathore Chetna Mahasangh, has decided to nurse objections to the use of the word telii in Kaminey's catchiest song. First the naaiis and now the teliis. All Gulzar needs for a hat-trick is to tickle the ire of another occupational sect. I can't resist thinking of maaliis.

[Cross-posted on the Vishal Bhardwaj blog]

family conceit, bollywood style

The Kapoor sisters have it made. In Kambakkht Ishq, the hideous Kareena Kapoor (whose makeup alone is enough to cause the popularity of eyeshadow to dip) gets to wiggle to a song whose chorus goes bebo mai.n bebo. For the uninitiated, Bebo is her nickname, her petname, what people at home call her, what every fan knows. Perhaps this was a tribute to her elder sister, the sometimes more talented and largely less hideous, Karis[h]ma Kapoor, who strutted to a song that went dekho mai.n huu.N karishmaa in Papi Gudia (the Child's Play ripoff, Charles). Or perhaps it was an ode to kRRiShnaa tuu mai.n karishmaa huu.N from Prem Shakti. Who knows?

Incidentally, unless memory fails me, a sequence in Papi Gudia was a filch not from Child's Play but a sequence from either F/X or F/X 2 -- which reminds me to try and find a copy of these delightful Bryan Brown starrers.

and they all shine on

[link courtesy: Siddhartha]

The Shiney Ahuja affair has already given the media enough to produce reams of speculative trash and jabber including meaningless discussions about morality, worries about the dark alleys of Bollywood (attention! paging Madhur Bhandarkar!) and general features on parties supporting and condemning Shiney Ahuja. The most rewardingly inevitable consequence was the emergence of films based on this incident. Qamar Hajipuri is about to unleash upon our senses a film starring unknowns named Divya Dwivedi and Hiten Rajgour. The film's title is emphatically unsubtle -- Chamak - The Shyning. It's a pity that Kabeer Kaushik's poorly welcomed sophomore flick wasn't released now. It could've benefitted from some cool marketing.

The other flick is a veritable tribute to Madhur Bhandarkar's exercises in clichéd exposés with a single word for a title. It is also helmed by Bollywood's finest living B-maker, Kanti Shah (you know, the guy who made Loha [the newer one mateys, not the Raj Sippy multistarrer with its ode to the silver-bodied Lassie Prima] and Gunda (yeah! you've heard of that one). The film is called Rape and we should expect to see a lot of that in it.

Since Madhur Bhandarkar was involved in a real-life case of his own and since that was already exploited in Madhubala, we must settle for whatever Messrs. Hajipuri and Shah have to offer.

when he would have been 70

The late Rahul Dev Burman would have turned 70 today. Since he passed away in 1994, he has achieved the iconic status reserved only for those who pass from the world of the living to the world of the dead. He has his share of fans and detractors. He gets his share of criticism for all the "inspired" songs he made. There will be the occasional article, perhaps a new book or a new documentary about his music. One also hopes that efforts like the Panchammagic shows continue, if only in the hope that more people might find out why his work found a lot of praise, and fans and how his ouevre has influenced many.

There are so many examples in the work of the now separated Pandit brothers (notes about a recent discovery can be found here). There's that "Pancham" rhythm (hardly his invention, but something that shows up prominently in his work) showing up in songs (aaj ham ne dil kaa har from Sir). That isn't the only Anu Malik song that owes something to the late RDB. Consider paagal paagal from his non-film album Ho Raha Hai Sama, which sounds like it was composed while he was listening to raat krismas kii thii in a loop.

Meanwhile, it's a relief to know that there's always something new one can discover in the canon. Consider how the title track for The Train contains elements that showed up again in the title track for Trimurti (typical Bollyfare).

Excuse me, but it's time to go back and savour the joys of the little-heard title track of the Kumar Gaurav starrer Siyasat.

wuxia noir?

Zhang Yimou (he who made Hero, among other things) is all set to remake The Coen Brothers classic Blood Simple. The Stunning Case Of The Three Gun Shots (echoes of Erle Stanley Gardner?) marks an interesting addition to an ant hill of trivia. The Coen exercise in modern noir derived its title from a Dashiel Hammett novel called Red Harvest featuring The Continental Op, a man with no name. Kurosawa's classic Yojimbo was reportedly based on this novel. Sergio Leone unofficially adapted Yojimbo into the first edition of his famous Spaghetti Western trilogy, A Fistful of Dollars. Years later, Walter Hill re-imagined Yojimbo in Prohibition-era Texas with Last Man Standing.
Yeah, yeah, I've written about all this before, but who cares.

the appropriator of melodies strikes again

Years ago I caught a film called Bhavna on the good old DD one late night. The film was a Shabana Azmi vehicle about a woman going through almost everything that could go wrong. Several years later (aka today, dear patient reader), I fished out one of my many HamaraCD compilations -- a two-fer with Bappi helming the music console, Bhavna and Dil Se Mile Dil. Bhavna opened with Kavita Paudwal and Asha Bhosle trading lines on dekho din ye. The Rajesh Roshan-esque elements of the arrangement didn't do much to erode that strong familiar feeling of having heard this melody before. A few hours later, the proverbial a-ha moment arrived. Bappi was probably visiting one of Disney's numerous theme parks with his family when that infectious earworm by the Sherman Brothers called It's A Small World made its way into his tune banks, emerging, faster than you could say "Mickey Mouse," as a duet for Bollywood. Surely, he thought, this wouldn't hurt ol' Walter's feelings.

For your viewing pleasure, here's Richard Sherman and here's Bappi's (re)creation.

J2EE caesar (aka IT groans)

Was Mark Antony the earliest known J2EE deployment engineer? You would think so.

In contrition, allow me to offer you a relatively less lauded Bappi gem from Hum Tumhare Hain Sanam (a movie that will make it to the history books for featuring Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan and Madhuri Dixit). Maya Govind spins a song rife with the clichés of the cold and the warm benefits of intimacy, but effects a masterful flourish by opening it with a rhyme joining two unlikely items -- a red tie and a cot at home. Go figure.

the thriller is gone

I kid thee not. The King of Pop is no more. Smooth criminals responsible for "original" works of art like jii le (Avinash) [watch it] and golii maar (Donga) [watch this or this abbreviated but higher quality version] (link to no video] may now step up to the microphone to tell us what a great loss this is.

In older news, Joginder Shelly passed away on June 15. If Ranga Khush doesn't ring a bell, don't bother scratching your brain cells to figure out who Joginder was. If you hear the gong, you'll also remember him from Mard (the one pitting the Big B against the Big Bad British), Loha and Mehndi.

vishal, hrithik: rumour or truth?

JR has beat me to the news bit about Hrithik Roshan being in Vishal's next project. Since this is supposed to be an original work and not based on something from the Bard, one is eager to hear more and, as always, one must wait impatiently.

rondo rashomondo

The beauty of American arrogance is that they can't imagine a world where they're not a step ahead.

Imagine Kurosawa's masterpiece stripped of any personal perspective, stripped of any engaging surprise, peppered with a rudimentary mix of politics, intrigue, elementary conspiracy theory and what might be the most expository intertitles ever invented. That might suffice to give you an idea of what to expect from Vantage Point. We open with a time. No date. Just a time. And then we get the first of the many converging short episodes. We get Sigourney Weaver skipping about the fence between a professional doing her job and an actress slumming miserably. We also get Forest Whitaker earnestly trying to convince us that all the praise lavished on his acting prowess (not to mention that Oscar for The Last King of Scotland) was all a big mistake. The film unfolds as a set of sequences conveniently bookmarked with a stark helpful note that we are about to get a flashback from a different angle. Each segment ends like all smart soap operas with some character dropping his or her jaw in shock -- the unsuspecting audience is denied a peek at what the character sees. As the intertitles get dumber and surpass all expectations of exposition, we are treated to a furiously edited car chase, some shooting, more crashes, an accident (more than once), some closure and a tribute to JFK paranoia. Dennis Quaid looks sincere (or perhaps he's just suffering from jet lag) and William Hurt's quiet earnest seriousness feels like an art cinema tribute to David Caruso's silky Horatio on CSI: Miami. Good product placement for the Sony HDV1080i, though

oye turing! turing oye!

.

CAPTCHA goes to desiiland. 'Nuff said.

ramakrishna jimmy shankar blows out the candles

ज़हर पीकर दुनिया को अम्रीत[sic] बाँटने वाला ... शंकर ... शंकर mechanic. चेहरे पर lorry के headlight की तरह जो दो आँखें लगी हुयी हैं न अगर उसे खोलकर देखोगी तो पता चलेगा ये रास्ता नहीं खेत है.

Don't you utter that name without रस्पेक्ट. Consider yourself lucky (pause) that you are born on this pious land (pause) where (pause) that noble आत्मा had taken बार्त. You ill-informed brats! You don't डिज़ार्व to be called Indians. You should be thankful to God (pause) that we work hard in the burning sun to grow crops for you worthless क्रेचर्स. Now get lost and don't step on this land again (pause) with your dirty feet. Get lost!

Happy birthday to the real Guru.

DB entendre

It is unlikely that anyone will displace database administrators as the practitioners of scatalogical innuendo in the world of information technology. DBAs have elevated a simple four letter word to epic floors of meaning, thanks to the importance of the solidarity and integrity of data as well as the need to create copies of working systems quickly. While others may take comfort in the different ways database servers help you, we can flush our woes away with some choice utterances.

What do I do with an 800 MB dump? (betrays the speaker's incompetence in babysitting Godzilla)

अगर तुम मुझे अपना dump दोगे तो मैं अपने dump के साथ क्या करूंगा? (reveals a strain of possessive insecurity)

we can restore the dump in minutes (what goes out must come back in)

shutters down?

Perhaps it's just another one of those terrible trailers that the clueless marketing types in Hollywood create. Perhaps it's meant to be an ode to B-movies. The trailer for Martin Scorsese's next film Shutter Island is out and I am not really excited. Although it marks the first Scorsese film to feature Ben Kingsley and Mark Ruffalo, it also marks the return of his current muse Leonardo DiCaprio sounding like he just got off the sets of The Departed. It's the third Dennis Lehane book to make it to the screen (I liked Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone) and is the first one pitched as a horror/thriller. That alone might mark a first for Scorsese with its mix of gothic horror and B-movies. Perhaps this is Scorsese doing The Devil's Backbone. Perhaps I'm just being unjust to a promising cast (Max von Sydow, Jackie Earle Haley). Oh well. Let us pray for number 67.

RGV does the unseen

If RGV is to be believed (spoiler!), the audience of Agyaat (theatrical trailer) will never see what the ill-fated film crew see in the film (yes, yes, yes, The Blair Witch Project but most importantly the legacy of Jacques Tourneur and Val Lewton). You, dear viewer, will not see what makes Nisha Kothari's pupils (and her body) dilate in fear. Wandering in the jungle (Predator), the crew presumably suffers a reduction in force (that's just my reading of the film in advance -- a "horror" film as a metaphor for the job situation in America) à la And Then There Were None (or Gumnaam, if you so wish you Bollywood-loving ignoramus). The clips confirm this and also offer a preview of the familiar RGV tropes including the Evil Dead-esque POV jaunts through the jungle (a place RGV has explored before). Enjoy the Sri Lankan foliage and Amar Mohile's thundering foreground music. I just hope RGV doesn't pull a whimper at the end of the bang (see: Raat). Could this be the movie that marks a return to form and appeal? Wait till this can hits the marquee. Until then, go watch Army Of Darkness and mourn the death of Duke Nukem Forever.

google docxs

Google Docs has added support for the DOCX and XLSX (YuckX!) formats that Office 2007 uses. I found out about the lack of support late last year and was waiting for this day. I like the new formats because you get smaller files, you deal with ZIP archives based on a rather well-documented format that uses XML and you also get to do cool things because of that. The last bit may not matter much to most people, but I think the new format makes it easier for people to write tools to do cool things with the files. WooX HooX!

never on sundays

I have often been stumped at how some restaurants around the Atlanta area, especially the ones that I like, decide to remain closed on certain days -- the choice of days seems rather arbitrary.

The humble Tandoor is closed on Mondays.

Bhojanic, the only restaurant that begs to differ from just about every other Indian restaurant I've seen around town, decides to dip the shutters on Sundays. No lunch. No dinner. Zip.

The Real Chow Baby has inexplicably decided to abandon offering lunch on Saturday and Sunday. This is really disturbing. Not only does this seem to kill a fair amount of business, but it also means that the only way you can "create your own stir fry" at lunch prices (about $4 less than the dinner price) is to show up during the working week. This was a recent move too: I had lunch a couple of times on Saturdays at the new outlet in Cobb Galleria last year before they flipped the sign to "Closed". I don't remember anything different in the lunch and dinner versions of the stir fry, which seems to imply that this move was purely for the $$.

There's no point ranting about higher prices for the same dishes on weekends -- it's something Indian restaurants do with their lunch buffets. There's also no point whining about restaurants that have a special lunch menu for the working week -- Thai restaurants do that; Chinese restaurants do that too. You get your choice of soup with your order and you pay less. If you come in on Saturday or Sunday, you get the deluxe version only -- more $$ for a different set of dishes, although you really wanted to try the lunch special. Pity.

July 28, 2012: Bhojanic is now open on Sundays from noon till 9pm. Dinner prices all day, just like Saturday, I am sure, but this is better than before. The promised new location in Buckhead is not yet live.

honest to vitriol

Suparn Verma's refreshingly candid when answering a question on plagiarism/influences in Rediff's new slide show on his next film Acid Factory, his first film with Sanjay Gupta (An old post hereabouts portended this collaboration):

Are your films mostly inspired by some movie or the other?

Not actually. Ek Khiladi is inspired by 14 con films -- Confidence and House of Game are among them. Chhal was not inspired. Qayamat was inspired by The Rock. Yeh Kya Ho Raha Hai was marketed as American Pie but it wasn't inspired by American Pie; not one gag of it was from American Pie. Zameen and Karam were not remakes.

PS: Rediff's new layout looks cleaner and nicer, but there's a problem with their slide shows -- you can't get a URL for a specific slide. The whole thing is implemented using JavaScript and the content of each slide is a string array and your clicks on Next and Prev are nothing but indexes for the array. The code's goop and that's the price you pay for the pleasant look.

blinded by uncontrollable cuts

I never thought I'd rant again like I did about Hancock. With Quantum of Solace, Marc Forster and company have piddled gloriously on the fine efforts to rejuvenate the franchise in Casino Royale. A direct sequel may sound like a great idea, but all the writers on the film seem to have failed to give us anything interesting. James Bond was never really an action hero. What we get here, however, is an attempt to counter this notion. Right from the furiously edited chase before the credits, we are hurtled from one action sequence to another. Characters are introduced and revived during moments of relief. Levity is tossed in but the humour, mercifully, never threatens to enter the realm defined by the Brosnan films, whose jokes seemed like post-modern tributes to the Roger Moore films.

Ian Fleming wrote a handful of James Bond stories that explored new territory; they didn't seem to be "typical" Bond excursions -- The Spy Who Loved Me and Quantum of Solace were two of the most striking examples in this pack. It seems ironic that both lost their titles to films that had nothing to do with their content. SMERSH was clearly too old for this generation, but naming the organisation Quantum was/is a stretch. It's just too convenient. It would also be wise to perish any hope of seeing any trace of the meaning of the delectable phrase from Fleming in the film. Bond is still suffering emotionally, but all that was chucked in favour of a dogpile of crash-boom-bang.

The chaos and confusion in the opening chase is, as far as I can tell, enough evidence that Marc Forster (who made the reasonably engaging Monster's Ball, the compelling Finding Neverland and the interesting Stranger Than Fiction) cannot handle action. Having chosen to yield the unhealthy fetish for shaky-cam/jerki-cam and having opted for an editing style that looks like someone was in a real hurry to make it to a conference with Mother Nature should be state's exhibits. The opening chase has received plaudits in many quarters; all I could figure out was that a lot of automotive equipment was trashed and some people died. The feeling of having missed most of the details came later during the second chase -- which ends with Bond shooting the traitor dead. By the time the end (not a bang but a whimper) came, I realised that there was nothing in this film to even match the parkour chase from Casino Royale.

The film has its share of references to older Bond films, the most obvious one being the nod to Goldfinger (with the twist of replacing gold with oil). It also packs tributes to Alfred Hitchcock (Vertigo, North By Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much). Mercifully, these references, unlike the hubris that buried Die Another Day, are not distracting. The rest of the film, however, is. Daniel Craig's faithful reading of the character is a saving grace. He remains unscathed by the morass around him, as does Judi Dench. The two deserve better as did all of us who awaited a more worthy successor to Casino Royale.

I fear that Craig's stint as Bond might look like Brosnan's -- starting off well, Brosnan ended up figuring in films that strove define new nadirs in the canon with their growing love for bombastic villains, flashy gadgets, quips and soulless action. Unless they decide to hire someone who disagrees with people like Paul Greengrass, there seems little hope.

altered discomfort

Where's the Ian Fleming wannabe who came up with the egregious quantum of change? I saw this in some corporate email message and wondered what the writer was trying to achieve.

Was he trying to mock the blandness of corporate email? This seems unlikely when you notice that the rest of the email, embellished so finely by this piquant phrase, is laced with lapses in tense, punctuation and abused prepositions.

Perhaps he was trying to show off his skill at using neologisms and trying to achieve brevity (at the expense of clarity). What in the name of flying incontinent swine is wrong with just saying "because there are several significant changes"? This, my dear readers, must be the explanation. He was just being stupid by making an email message tougher to read. One nurses an iota of hope that he will soon resist the temptation for terse tripe.

black pearls: sab gol maal hai

Jack Sparrow would have been proud of Bollywood's music directors. Their copious output hides several treasures that, in a matter of time, will make it to portals like Karthik's.

Ever heard of a film called Dhoondte Reh Jaoge? No no no, not the rip-off of The Producers. This was a 1998 flick starring Naseeruddin Shah, Javed Jaffrey. It was also one of those many minor movies that had songs by the now-defunct music director duo Jatin-Lalit. Known for the undeniably obvious influence of the music of R. D. Burman on their songs, they were (and Lalit Pandit still is) known for plagiarism from foreign shores, an affliction that most of the Bollywood music directors suffer from. Since any Jatin-Lalit soundtrack is always welcome (if only for a sampling), I was glad to have chanced upon the songs of the film recently. Things opened well when I realised that the brothers Pandit seemed to have chosen nothing less than Alan Mencken and Tim Rice's Academy Award-winning song A Whole New World from Aladdin with na tum bolo. A few tracks later, the "tribute" to the late RDB emerged with jaan-e-man jaane do, which lifted the melody from Bundal Baaz's kyaa huaa yaaro.n.

With which we move over to the all-encompassing genre of Indipop to examine the interesting album Sona that Sona Mohapatra cut with her now-husband Ram Sampath. Ram Sampath's been rather successful what with Tanha Dil and the stint with Siddharth Achrekar as Colourblind. But Sona, while showcasing a great voice and some enjoyable arrangements, opens with bolo naa, a song that works off a riff that's so much like the riff on Sting' Shape of my Heart. This is quite unfortunate given that a few years later, Ram Sampath was the victim of plagiarism.

getting onto the bullet train again

When the experiment called The Bullet Train was released in 2003, I had posted an optimistic note of welcome. Years later, the CD still holds up on a few levels. It is still an interesting experiment -- a remix of tracks by the same music director -- a very special case of sampling, if you will. It also works as a mostly consistent peppy offering for the ears. Something that never struck me then seems rather obvious now. The remastering by Debashish Mohapatra at Pancham Studios is commendable, but it also exposes familiar problems with the original mastered tracks. The punch of the bass is weak on some; on others the sounds in the lower registers seem to have been stripped away. It's another reminder of the inconsistency of HMV's catalogue: consider how Pyar ka Mousum (1969) sounds older than Baharon ke Sapne (1967) on CD; consider the marvel of the combo CD Yaadon ki Baaraat/Hum Kisise Kum Naheen, on the other hand. It seems like a stroke of luck that the verve of each song made it over from the LP to the CD.

My doubts about the pathetic way companies like HMV mastered CDs from LPs got a shot in the arm when I got my hands on two spectacular compilations from the guys known as Bombay Beats, The Bombay Connection, Vol. 1: Funk From Bollywood Action Thrillers and Bombay Connection, Vol. 2: Bombshell Baby of Bombay. The lovely mix of the vocoder and the bass on the title track of The Burning Train sounded far stronger and fuller than any other version on CD that I had heard. The Bombay Beats guys had created CDs from LPs and their process fared far better than whatever the guys at HMV/GCIL had. The packaging was exquisite as well and it was evidence of more love for the pulpy excesses of Bollywood than anyone within the system could ever muster or design.

giving the censors a RANN for their verdict

The trailer for RGV's Rann is his first ensemble of known names in a long time: the Big B, Riteish Deshmukh, Paresh Rawal, Rajpal Yadav, Gul Panag, Rajat Kapoor, Suchitra Krishnamurthy, Mohnish Behl(!) and Kannada film actor Sudeep (who splashed into Bollywood in RGV's Phoonk). Neetu Chandra's also on the roll, but I don't think I saw her in the montage. Something keeps reminding me of Irving Wallace's The Almighty (adapted by Joshi in Malayalam and Hindi -- remember Jeetendra in New Delhi?). Only time will tell. Meanwhile, the song on the background was enough evidence that RGV hadn't lost his love for controversy. It's a pessimistic modification of India's national anthem with much of the original melody intact. Predictably, the censor board has a problem with it. Only time, once again, will tell. Meanwhile, I'll return to the trailer of Agyaat, his return to horror sporting the familiar canted camera, the portent of horror with sound and visual suggestion and the occasional tip of the hat to Sergio Leone.

email according to microsoft

It is only now that I see just how significantly Microsoft Outlook (and Outlook Express) have influenced sending, receiving and handling email.

In a bad way.

The proprietary PST format was only the tip of a compost heap. As with most Microsoft products, Outlook accommodates every email storage format as input, but refuses to let you escape the PST when you want to move to another email client. You're locked in. You're left staring at a horrible complicated binary format that eats up a lot of disk space (like you care).

Forums and newsgroups taught me the virtues of plain text, the value of HTML when used sparingly and only when appropriate, the importance of quoting. They also taught me about the flame wars dedicated to quoting/posting. Top posting was bad. Top quoting/Bottom posting and inline posting seemed better. Newsgroup management software managed threads. Every email message didn't have to look like it was responsible for managing the state of the conversation thus far. The corporate world taught me when top posting made sense -- it seemed like places shackled to an Exchange server and Outlook chewing away on everyone's disk never seemed to do well on communication. This meant that emails grew in size as the conversation went on until someone finally realised that one or more people who had to be part of this discussion had been left out. One "copying X" later, we have this snowball all set to mow another hapless inbox.

Until 2007, Outlook did a pathetic job with HTML (you remember all that XML cruft, don't you?). RTF is still around, though, and it's the default format. RTF still sucks. HTML is your best bet if you want to be nice to the Internet and the recipient's disk.

Outlook hates plain text. Make that "detests." Or "loathes." Condescendingly. Don't even bother thinking about quotation markers. Do it yourself. Text wrapping is awful. Outlook also employs what looks like one of the silliest wrapping algorithms ever known. No wrapping for the reader's convenience. If you try adding quotation markers, be prepared to send out email that looks uglier than Emran Hashmi. If you choose text, you get no support from the email client. To this cake of unpleasantness, add the icing of Outlook's "intelligent" handling of line breaks. It decides to strip "extra" line breaks in the copy that the recipient of your email sees. Your efforts in preparing a numbered list just got drowned in cowdung. Outlook can be configured not to do this, but try telling every possible recipient of every email you might send to configure their email client. Just try it. Go on. Try it.

I moved to Thunderbird and the move was painful. My obsession with folders and classification did not help. Proprietary email archival tools seamlessly "integrated" with the email client made matters challenging. It was arduous, manual and painful. At the end of it, I had all my email (except for some annoyances like embedded OLE images and the loss of BCC information) and it was not as demanding of disk space as Outlook was. Lightning was enough to help me respond to invitations and set up my calendar. Helpful posts on the Internet and having worked with LDAP helped me use the Global Address Book as well. There were other things I still needed Outlook for, but I had all my email.

All I have to do is deal with all the mocking snide remarks, the jokes and all that blah-blah predicated on "you Microsoft hater." I also have to learn to accept situations where top posting is unavoidable (this is when I use Outlook for the only -- IMHO -- thing it does well). I long for communities where email helps communication instead of heralding an avalanche.

I also have a chance to understand how even Thunderbird still has its share of annoyances.

I'm sure I haven't seen the last of TOFU, though.

multiplexing choice

I wonder how many users of either ... or realise that the expression can accommodate exactly two choices. Think of an exclusive or in logic, if you wanted some way to remember this. Abuse of the expression to stuff more choices is rife in usage, especially in conversations. A little popup in Eclipse today offered evidence that the Javadoc in Sun's JDK was not immune; Here's the extract from the documentation for the getTimeZone(String) method in the java.util.TimeZone class in J2SE 5.0 (I have underlined the guilty snippet):

getTimeZone

public static TimeZone getTimeZone(String ID)

Gets the TimeZone for the given ID.

Parameters:

ID - the ID for a TimeZone, either an abbreviation such as "PST", a full name such as "America/Los_Angeles", or a custom ID such as "GMT-8:00". Note that the support of abbreviations is for JDK 1.1.x compatibility only and full names should be used.

Returns:

the specified TimeZone, or the GMT zone if the given ID cannot be understood.

a commencement of innovation

I sat in a red chair at the Georgia Dome for the first time in my years in Sprawlopolis , one of many in attendance at Georgia Tech's Spring 2009 Commencement Ceremony for graduate students. After the obligatory blah-blah about "the nation's finest" and the "change the world" dogma, it was time for the meat of the ceremony, paradoxically the one least likely to be entertaining: the conferring of degrees. This is but a litany of names and the only ones who're really happy are the recipients who showed up and their well-wishers scattered in the crowd. However, if you have a place like Georgia Tech that is a melting pot of foreigners and you have an announcer who has to make sense of monikers that only look like different surreal flavours of alphabet soup.

Reportedly, each recipient can, on the piece of paper bearing his/her name, offer hints to assist in pronunciation. But IPA is not something you'd expect to know or use often. This means that most people don't really avail of this opportunity. People have also probably decided that the way their name is pronounced is hardly worth any importance in the ceremony.

This means that those like me in the audience who'd love any excuse to make the proceedings interesting welcomed the innovation of one of the announcers that evening. Faced with so many challenging combinations of vowels and consonants, she decided to be innovative as she tried to get her plosives and fricatives right. And we relished each inventive uttering; here are a few nuggets:

Sneha: snaaihaa
Chandrababu: cha.ndraabhaabhuu
David: daviiD
Madhav: madhaav
Deshpande: Desappaa.NDe
Elangovan: iilaa.Nguuvaan
Mayank: myaanak
Goel: gaaul
Nehil: naaiihiil
Jamsandekar: jamadiikhaar
Chetna: chaiintaa
Kher: kaii-iira
Kolhe: kwaalhe
Pai: peii
Panse: paan-saaii
Patil: paTiil
Devdutt: devaduut

I'd have shown up for the baccalaureate ceremony the next day but the roll call wasn't so promising.

f for franchise

all i wanna say is that they don't really care about us
-- [They Don't Care About Us/Michael Jackson]

Salil just made my day with a pointer to the most significant achievement in the history of voting in India -- the shift to using the most famous digit on the hand to place the mark of a voter. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, all people fortunate enough to (a) have found their place on a voters list in their wretched constituency, and (b) have managed to be able to enter the booth, choose a name and emerge triumphant at having fulfilled their civic responsibility will now be able to respond confidently to the question "did you vote?"; One must note that just how savvy our politicians are -- the state CM clearly has no idea what he just did by waving that digit at the camera; "Hold on," you might say, "this is probably just everyone making light of such a funny thing"; However, I must say, it's going to take a few centuries before the Indian media become open and the Indian politicians are capable of laughing at themselves. Meanwhile, we will do it for them. You may now return to the floor to laugh your guts out.

you paid for this typo

Users of the Oracle database may have seen the following error if they've been playing around with storing hierarchical data and running fancy queries to retrieve them using CONNECT BY:

ORA-30004: when using SYS_CONNECT_BY_PATH function, cannot have seperator as part of column value

Aside from the refusal to use definite or indefinite articles, there's a common misspelling of separator.

I really wish I could remember which series of Dell's projectors is plagued with a typo on the screen that notes that there's no signal. Somehow the misspelled form (singal) made it through all the editorial gates and stood out like King Kong's sore toe on every screen it was splashed on. Talk about sending out the wrong signals.

a momentary lapse of perspective

We return to the world of crapspeak to take a look at one of the finest creations to emerge from this foundry of neologism: the lazy verbose template approximated as "from a/an X perspective." The irony is that it represents anything but the perspective referred to. The variety of values that X can be assigned is astounding; consider programming, finished, usability, scrolling, development, management, QA, sanity, risk analysis, testing, performance. The list is endless; the pit is bottomless; the effluvium is eternal. What may not be obvious is just how these alternatives refuse to want to be strong adjectives. An adjective is what "X" should be, not some posturing noun or noun phrase (or some other part of speech that attempts a competent imitation of an adjective). Crapspeakers have long since decided to strip the phrase of its true purpose (to qualify a perspective) and bandy instead a tasteless aurally annoying stream of verbal diarrhoea that makes your brain cringe with repulsion. Has the crusade for a fresh perspective been abandoned? Or is it no longer fresh from a battle perspective?