universal hawas

The Indian subtitling industry should file a patent for the process of converting any G-rated or PG-rated film into something that only adults can appreciate. The industry has enough prior art to support the claim too (YT has written about this before). A video I recently caught (courtesy: Baradwaj Rangan). The song's from a film called Kaakkii Chattai (that means Khaki Shirt, I believe) and recognisably an Ilayaraaja creation. Being a true professional, Kamal Saar complies with the disco fetish of the time and dons an outlandish costume. His co-star Madhavi and the supporting dancers do the same, while Sathyaraj (who was also the subject of a couple of posts hereabouts). The subtitling department has not only introduced mature content but has also done so with the brevity that marked some of Ghalib's verse. For a song that runs for 3 minutes and 40 seconds, you only have a pitiful handful of subtitles and quite a few are repeated. Here are all of them for your reading pleasure once you have enjoyed the video augmented by S. Janaki's sighing.

a young matured girl is dancing by kick
dear! come here/dear come here
he asks my sari at night and it disturbe[sic] my king
shall i play music instrument on your body?
i am straving[sic] for you very much.
shall i see your secret parts without taking risk?
i didn't see any wounds by love
we are getting fired in lust

If you're wondering what the costumes have to do with a half-saree, you're not alone. But I don't think anyone really cared.

ash and sin: the sequels

(extracts from an internal memo at a famous production studio discussing possible sequels to Paap ko Jalaa Kar Raakh Kar Doonga)

The first sequel should be called राख को बुझाकर खाख कर दूँगा and it should accommodate enough pulpy violence and high drama to ensure that fans of the first film are not disappointed. While doing this, the film must also attempt to include a metaphysical meditation on the themes of morality, guilt and rage: one of the ways that this could be achieved is using a conversation scene featuring the top two starrers jogging and working out on a foggy morning in some hill station; the conversation could include an explanation of the title (which suggests that dousing of ash is not only possible but also effective in eliminating the presence thereof); this literary liberty could be reinforced by the diegetic use of the Gulzar/R. D. Burman classic मेरा कुछ सामान (translation: some of my goods) as our heroes trade nested flashbacks, suggestive looks and gulps of Vat 69. The inclusion of a rape scene is crucial in order to secure an advertising partnership with a leading dealer in saris and a swimsuit chain -- the substitution of inner wear with a suitably tasteful swimming outfit would, I believe, be an acceptable compromise. In order to reach a larger audience, we must ensure that this scene is filmed in pitch darkness and we must rely on effective sound design as well as some suitable lines of dialogue to let the audience know what is happening ([name of sari dealer] की साड़ी को फाड़ते हुए बुरा लग रहा है मेरी जान मगर क्या करूं ... and [name of swimsuit chain] का swimsuit?? तुम्हारी पसंद तो लाजवाब है जान-ए-मन)...

The second sequel must offer less violence and fewer salacious acts and be made for the younger college audience. It must have a tragic ending but otherwise maintain a lighter tone from the start. It will be challenging to balance essential narrative elements such as the destruction of the nuclear family, the corruption of the joint family, the morally compromising temptations rife in middle-class life, the obligatory presence of a pure villainous entity and the defoliation of damsels as well as two item numbers that must feature the matriarch of the household (the producer has been kind enough to relax this need in the first sequel; we will need to express our gratitude for this creative freedom). We could learn a thing or two from masters such as Alfred Hitchcock, who managed to explore personal themes and ideas and fulfill creative aspirations while making films that appealed to a large audience and were commercially viable. In keeping with the goals of the film and in order to remind audiences of the heritage of the film, I believe पाप से राख तक would be an appropriate title.

r d belafonte

On a whim I had checked out the first three volumes in the series Troubadours of the Folk Era from the public library. It was nice to hear San Francisco Bay Blues, Pete Seeger singing Turn! Turn! Turn!, Buffy Saint-Marie singing The Universal Soldier and the Brothers Four singing Greenfields. Two tracks after Greenfields had faded away, The Tarriers began belting out their hit version of The Banana Boat Song, which has been most famous as Harry Belafonte's signature song (arguably this is the song most popularly cited when people think of calypso). The melody was familiar, but the addition of Hill and Gully Rider was a nice touch. As I hummed along with them on Well, I sleep by sun and I work by moon, I suddenly realised that I had heard this melody before. It was in a Hindi film song that had interestingly blended lyrics addressing a boatman with the ambience of a dance number. Numerous articles about the song had called it a "cabaret boat" song although the video was evidence that the only thing on the minds of the filmmakers was a dance of the fisher folk (and hence the boatman was no longer an interesting device but a natural choice). The film was Bandhe Haath and the song was ओ माँझी (a transcription by yours truly appears here). The man behind the song was the late great Rahul Dev Burman. The a-ha! moment comes at the start of each a.ntaraa and continues till the turnaround. Wait for प्यार ओ माँझी तेरा झूठा है / मीत बनके तूने लूटा है / भरी दुनिया में अकेली हूँ / जान घायल दिल टूटा है at the 02:27 mark in the video and then for तू मेरा है मैंने सोचा था / यही सपना था निगाहों में / तू खिवैया होगा रे जीवन का / पार उतरूँगी तेरी बाहों में at the 04:21 mark.

elsewhere hereabouts: thoughts on the title song of the same film.

both sides of the wall

challenge: is there anybody there?
response: nobody home

challenge: stop
response: run like hell

where have i heard it before?

Does anyone remember Anu Malik's non-film album Ho Raha Hai Sama? That's right; it's the one with the song धुआँ धुआँ हो रहा है समा (yeah yeah, लगी लगी ये दिल की लगी न समझो इसे दिल्लगी). That album had a song called पागल पागल, whose tune was quite familiar and simple to remember: the Cambridge Chimes made famous by the Big Ben. To put it politely, Malik quotes the melody and riffs on it; to put it plainly, he stole it. The case for theft isn't a strong one, because the authorship of the melody is disputed and the tune's probably in the public domain. Fans of R. D. Burman will probably see another source of inspiration -- the mood of रात Christmas की थी.

दे दे दे दे दिल दे दे मुझको might have been the most famous song on Alisha's album Bombay Girl released by the now-deceased Magnasound in the early 90s, but the title track was guilty of quoting (filching?) the famous riff from Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye. Wonder if producer Leslie Lewis had something to do with that.

The brothers Pandit have never been subtle about the influence of R. D. Burman on their music. शहर की परियों from Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar (whose a.ntaraas owed a debt to जीना क्या from Dhan Daulat) finds a cousin in जान-ए-मन जाने दो from Dhoondte Reh Jaaoge; the source? क्या हुआ यारों from Bundal Baaz.

Last year, Suhel Rais Khan, the song of legendary sitar player Ustad Rais Khan, delivered a new album called Jazbah to the masses. The album featured him sharing the microphone with the likes of Shreya Ghoshal, Bhupinder Singh, Mitali and Sadhna Sargam on a melange of semi-classical pop. The opening song मेरी आँखों में owes a debt to the late R. D. Burman: All you have to do is cue up किसी से दोस्ती from Dil Diwana.

travis von trapp: are you singing to me?

A review of Harry Brown in the Daily Mail includes this:

Harry Brown makes any Quentin Tarantino film seem like The Magic Roundabout. Makes Taxi Driver look like The Sound Of Music. Makes The Long Good Friday feel like a Pixar movie

This makes me wonder about the ultimate saccharine fuzzy family-friendly feel-good film: what kind of movie would make The Sound Of Music look like Taxi Driver?

linty barroom

It appears that you can count on the French (and especially Jean-Pierre Melville) to take a mystery thriller and lace it with tragedy and world weariness. The most recent example for me was Tell No One. In the hands of a genre hack, this film might well have been a flashy tank of cliché laced with anxious motifs and herrings. But director Guillame Canet makes judicious use of good performances, an understated use of action sequences and serves up an engaging drama embellished with a background score employing bass, dissonance and chords and bends on an electric guitar.

It turned out the film was based on a novel by an American writer named Harlan Coben. All this was not without precedent (Truffaut had adapted David Goodis; René Clément had adapted Patricia Highsmith). There was just one problem: I had not heard of Harlan Coben. This was unfortunate, because he's quite famous and well-lauded. So I did the only thing I could: I ventured forth to the public library to mend my ways. I picked up Tell No One (still unread), Fade Away, Drop Shot and Promise Me.

The last three happened to be be part of the canon dedicated to his creation Myron Bolitar, a star college basketball player with a degree from Harvard Law School, who is now a sports agent, who ends up becoming a gumshoe while trying to protect or defend the interests of his clients. His closest friend and associate is, perhaps, the most curious character I have seen in detective fiction. Windsor "Win" Lock-Horne III is rich, smart, extremely loyal and coldly dispassionate; he could be trading trivia about the West/Ward Batman TV show or crisply sending a couple of no-good goons to their maker. Then there's Esperanza Diaz, Myron's associate at his company MBSportsReps; Esperanza used to be a professional wrestler bearing the moniker "Little Pocahontas." Then there's Coben penchant for loading the books with witticisms and word play. It's the kind of wisecracking that brought the 007 films to their knees in the days of Roger Moore, but it seems to work rather well here. Consider the following extract from Fade Away:

"[...] It took a while to get the ducks all in a row. It's a balance, you know. Got to keep the ducks on an even keel. Losing Greg really knocked the wind from our sails, but we finally got those ducks back up. Now you come along, see. Clip doesn't tell us why , but he insists we add you to the roster. Fine, Clip is the big chief, no question. But we worry about getting our ducks back sailing straight, you see?"
The mixing of metaphors was making Myron dizzy. "Sure, I don't want to cause any problems."
"I know that." He stood, put the chair back with a sweeping motion. "You're a good guy, Myron. Always were a straight arrow. We need that now. A team-comes-first kinda guy, am I right?"
Myron nodded. "A straight-sailing duck."

All the Bolitar novels pack in multiple twists at the end and, if you've been a good reader of thrillers with obligatory twists, you can probably figure out what's going to unfold. To Coben's credit, he doesn't write to set you up for a big payoff. He just writes matter that's straight and engaging with characters that are fun to follow. It's also a relief that Coben doesn't indulge in the bestseller fetish for dumping paragraphs of informative discourse as evidence of the writer having spent hours in the library and on the Internet. All three Bolitar novels have been "unputdownable" and I hope the rest are just as entertaining.

disregard all bells

I picked up Up the Down Staircase from the shelf in the library for two reasons. The first was simply because it had been on that shelf for weeks with the title plastered on the jacket in an interesting font and layout. The second was because I was interested in what else Robert Mulligan had done besides To Kill A Mockingbird, which might be the film he is most famous for. The film stars Sandy Dennis as a teacher with ideals and dreams in her first teaching assignment at an inner-city school. If you've seen Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, it is hard to forget Sandy Dennis; the neurotic interpretation of characters is evident in her portrayal of Sylvia Barrett. The film also covers aspects of a teacher's life often not seen in movies of this genre -- the emphasis on forms and procedures is reminiscent of its use for satire in The Ipcress File. I can't think of another film that contained references to Delaney cards. You also hear of nerts and darklings in addition to references to Emily Dickinson and Idylls of the King. That's not bad for a visit to the school. [February 05, 2010]

tropical muse

Siddhartha points me to one of the many articles dedicated to the cyclone assailing South-East India: Cyclone Laila Kills 12 screams the headline. The reasons for choosing the name are clear, but I can't help wondering that the guy who chose this name was watching Madhur Bhandarkar's revelatory opus Aan: Men at Work featuring that Sunidhi Chauhan club song that began thus:

एक लैला ने दिल उछाला है
सारे आलम को मार डाला है

The subtitles, for those who were not as privileged as I to witness them, were one juliet has offered her heart/she has killed the whole atmosphere.

word clouds for reels

Two Mules for Sister Sara: Boetticher's original screenplay was transformed to suit the players. Don Siegel directs Clint Eastwood singing The Ballad of Sam Hall and Shirley MacLaine, who despite reportedly having enjoyed working on the film bravely serves up a performance of gusto and the occasional loudness. There are moments that remind you of Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone's score reinforces the feeling (there's a motif that seems to quote from one of his cues for The Good the Bad and the Ugly. [September 26, 2009]

It is difficult to forget Paul Scofield after his performance as Thomas More in A Man for all Seasons. Fred Zinnemann's film opens with a shot of the hands of Orson Welles, who plays Cardinal Wolsey. It's a small part that prevents Welles from even think of stealing the show from Scofield. [April 03, 2009]

LA in atlanta

As he drove the golf cart slowly towards the second model unit, the couple considered the irony: The location was bland, eerie. The populace looked scary. A montage would look like it had come out of Training Day or Colors. But the apartment they had just seen had a great floor plan. The rooms felt spacious instead of merely being so by virtue of geometry. It was strange, however, to see a walk-in closet attached to the secondary bedroom while the master bedroom was relegated to a carpeted aisle sandwiched between a simple wall closet and a washbasin.

Their attention went back to him as he talked about noting the tag on a car, an Infiniti. The reason: a smashed windshield. Lest we think that he was doing a great job as a sardonic wit, he pulled up next to the said car. The guilty rock lying next to the front wheel added to the texture of the event. The lady who pulled up in her SUV nearby noted that she had seen this when she returned at 2 AM. Nobody seemed shocked or surprised or even alarmed. It was like people talking about the pollen in the Spring.

The perfect coda came when he asked the couple if they could guess who owned this place back in the 70s and the 80s. The answer, quite unguessably, was Larry Flynt.

they said it

This Rediff article is one of the few going gaga about Ashutosh Gowariker signing on Karl Walter Lindenlaub (हा कोण?) for Buddha (hopefully the conclusion of what will, several years later, be known as his Period Trilogy). After formally noting what a joy (what a joy) it was to work with Lindenlaub, Gowariker goes on to justify the choice of English as the language of the film:

The first important decision that Dr Modi (producer) took was to make Buddha in English and that got me immediately interested because I have always felt that when it comes to religion, you must cater to an international audience, especially so in the case of Buddha.

The hunt for a "new face" to play सिद्धार्थ गौतम is on. Once they find him, expect an article titled Buddha मिल गया.

caffeinated predictability


He knows the benefits of coffee because it helps to free decision making. (Laughter.) Thank you very much. So let's have some coffee because it helps to free decision making. (Laughter.) Thank you very much. So let's have some coffee because it helps to free decision making. (Laughter.) Thank you very much. So let's have some coffee because it helps to free decision making. (Laughter.) Thank you very much. So let's have some coffee because it helps to free decision making. (Laughter.) Thank you very much. So let's have some coffee because it helps to free decision making. (Laughter.) Thank you very much. So let's have some coffee because it helps to free decision making. (Laughter.) Thank you very much. So let's have some coffee because it helps to free decision making. (Laughter.) Thank you very much. So let's have some coffee because it helps to free decision making. (Laughter.) Thank you very much. So let's have some coffee in the morning to get us all extremely excited.


{generated by selecting coffee as all the inputs to tedPAD}

a stalker in a taurus

Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers is less layered than Dead Man, less adventurous than Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai and not as unpredictable as Coffee and Cigarettes. But it's still a nice, calm little story with a great cast (Bill Murray, Jeffrey Wright, Sharon Stone, Francis Conroy, Jessica Lange, Tilda Swinton, Julie Delpy), a wonderfully eclectic soundtrack and product placement (MSN, MapQuest, Ford, Budget): Don Johnston, a ladies man in his youth has done well in computers and lives life listening to music and watching old films. An innocuous pink envelope arrives on the day his current girlfriend is moving out -- the envelope contains a letter from one of his former girlfriends telling him that he has a 19-year old son who may be out looking for his father. The only problem is that the girlfriend does not write her name. Don's neighbour Winston (Wright) convinces him to track the writer of the letter down. What follows is a journey from one interesting encounter to another.

Bill Murray turns in another performance dominated by his ability to convey a lot by appearing to do nothing. Call it expressive nothingness, if you will. Jarmusch raises the stakes with the ladies and only underscores the humour of Murray's performance. He is ably supported by Jeffrey Wright in a performance that is as different from his turn in Syriana as it is from his interpretation of Felix Leiter in Casino Royale. The film offers several mysteries, most of which remain unresolved even as the end credits roll. But it is undeniably a familiar trope -- the road movie -- attacked in a most charmingly unfamiliar way. And I'm sure the fact that Pell James and Chloe Sevigny were also in Zodiac has no bearing on the proceedings. [June 28, 2008]

It's All About Love: apocalyptic ailings

Thomas Vinterberg's It's All About Love has Joaquin Phoenix and Claire Daines playing a couple on the verge of a divorce in a world that's falling apart. There are flying Ugandans, there is snow in July, people are falling dead all over the place because they have no love, and there is a brother (played by Sean Penn), who used to be afraid of flying, but now can't do anything but fly about in a plane. There's also some intrigue tossed in perhaps to add some vim to this often sober exploration of love in a time out of joint (I stole that from Philip K Dick who appropriated it from the Bard). The DVD transfer looks and sounds gorgeous and, if you have the patience to sit through a not-so-moving love story set in a world resigned to its doom, offers a fairly rewarding viewing experience. [june 23, 2008]

the things people do and still get paid

The programmers who are paid well and get promoted while being completely ignorant of the implications of a package name for a Java source file. While it seems stentorian to expect everyone to read the Java Language Specification (Chapter 7, in this case, and section 7.2.1 to be precise), it surely isn't too much to ask that people heed the complaints of javac when it fails to successfully compile files whose package names have nothing to do with where the file is located on the disk.

The programmers who flaunt experience with the newer versions of the JDK (5.0 and 6.0) on their résumé but ignore javac's warnings about all the raw types abundant in their freshly written code, simply because they do not understand why the compiler has a problem with code that works.

The programmers who just don't understand why XSLT (from the wikipedia page: XSLT (XSL Transformations) is a declarative, XML-based language used for the transformation of XML documents...) does not work on a document that is not XML.

acronymous apathy

SEVIS. PIMS (more here). SAVE. And now REPAIR. The incongruity is getting a bit more unsubtle. The high concept version is "a healthcare reform proposal for immigration." 'Tis nothing but a case of total flatulence in the absence of excrement.

the song remains the same

I've been listening to CDs I had heard years ago and as The Best of Simon and Garfunkel spun away, I thought of songs like The Boxer that I had kept listening in a loop. I realised that, years later, things hadn't changed. As soon as the guitar opened the track, I knew that I hadn't forgotten all the things I had relished so long ago: Paul Simon's way with words, the arrangements (the brass, the piccolo trumpet, the pedal steel) and the catchy refrain.

All lies and jest
Still, a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest

The undergraduate days back home were when I got an education in rock. I had managed to cover some ground with Pink Floyd and The Beatles thanks to spending time in the reference section of The British Council Library. Unfortunately, I had only heard of Led Zeppelin. I had not managed to hear even a single song by the band. This was before the omnipresence of Wikipedia and the numerous portals of streaming radio. The music shops around town lacked an interesting back catalogue. I had struck gold with some Beatles tapes (Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band) and Pink Floyd albums still adorned the shelves, but as far as Plant, Page, Bonham and Jones were concerned, there was just nada. Zilch. Until the day I struck gold on a music store in Pune camp. Innocently sitting on a rack amidst other random unsold tapes was Physical Graffiti. In retrospect, this double album serving as my introduction to the band was rather risky; it's almost like introducing someone to the The Beatles with The White Album. The Zeppelin double, however, was arguably less sprawling in its excess than The White Album. I was hooked as soon as the snarling energetic unapologetic riff of Custard Pie opened the album. As the mix of wah-wah, clavinet, harmonica and (once I paid close attention) the risqué lyrics faded away, I was a fan.

united i stand

From one of the many news items about the proposed merger of Continental Arilines and United Airlines:

"The only people happier than Jeff and I today is our corporate sales team," Tilton said.

An example of the abuse of I (explored hereabout earlier) in the corporate uppersphere. There's the minor matter of trying to match people and is (one could argue about the true subject in that sentence), but it's not worth it. It's truly sad that such gaffes appear instead of the familiar bag of bland yet safe crapspeak (you know, stuff about the union being a strategic initiative in order to serve their customers and patrons better and marking a positive step forward down the runway of air travel).

all those reels ago

War of the Worlds [april 29, 2007]: This take on the H. G. Wells classic gets the Steven Spielberg treatment complete with great special effects mixed well into a narrative founded in a focus on the immediate believable trope called the family. Cruise was, as he was in Minority Report, bearable enough and Dakota Fanning stays under aural control for the most part. All things considered, the only significant thing in the film for me was that bravura piece of SFX responsible for the opening attack; at the end of a long sequence of death rays and mayhem is this shot of Cruise and the others driving out of the city. That icing on the cake is worth the rest of this film, which, sadly, ends disappointingly. Morgan Freeman's narration, a device that didn't work for me, only underscores the whimper.

Willie Dynamite [july 15, 2007]: Willie is an ambitious pimp in New York City driving a Cadillac (what else) whose plates read WILLIE in the front and DYNAMITE at the back. The funky theme song introduces us to him as he walks with "seven women in the palm of his hand" and this is how we see him. The directness of the visuals is just one of the problems of the film. The other is the rather bland direction of what could have been a fine tragedy bolstered by strong earnest performances. The outrageous costumes, the overtly emphasised acting and dialogue delivery (especially in the meeting of the pimps) stick out like elephant's legs with mumps; they would have fit so well had Gilbert Moses III been more adventurous. Great title, cool music, little else.

This Man Can't Die [january 11, 2007]: If only Bollywood had relied more on Spaghetti Westerns for plot, narrative elements and cinematic style than just music, we'd have had a far better crop of revenge dramas. Consider Gianfranco Baldanello's tale of revenge laced with a persistent catchy guitar theme (as well as an appropriation of Morricone's theme from A Fistful of Dollars) and some nudity to keep the lascivious lads happy. There are murdered parents and a raped mute sister to offer motivation and there are a few twists for good effect. Toss in an interesting saloon brawl and you've got yourself a half-decent flick. I leave you with the lyrics of the song written to the guitar theme, sung almost like a tribute to the theme song for Thunderball:

life is the only precious thing god's given to you
life is too marvellous, too bright to make a man die
if no one can give his own life without someone who cares
it's a shame that you cannot forgive another man

life is too marvellous for you as well as for me
love is the common precious thing to take and to give
if no one can give his own life without someone who cares
it's a shame that you cannot forget your hate