déjà bro

A promo (courtesy: PFC) is out for Onir's next directorial venture Sorry Bhai. The film's already got enough press as the return vehicle (or one of the release vehicles) of Chitrangda Singh. Although lyricist Amitabh Varma returns, the music director this time around is Gaurav Dayal. The song on the promo is a KK song naa jaane khoye kahaa.N. It's a dulcet melody with gentle orchestration that begins as an echo of Vivek Philip's work for My Brother Nikhil, but the tune develops into a set of melodic fragments that sound so much like Ballo on Rabbi Shergill's new album Avengi Ja Nahin. Coincidence, something more, anyone?

it makes me wonder

If I call you because I'm unable to connect to the Internet, why do you have automated messages telling me to go to your support website for troubleshooting tips? Is there a secret avenue to the Internet when those merry lights on the modem aren't blinking (a mainstream way of telling me that there's no way I'm getting online)?

Did Asha Bhosle sing any more kar le pyaar kar le songs besides one for Kalyanji-Anandji in Sachaa Jhutha (worried about that spelling? go sue the namers of the film) and the unofficially-tuned-by-RDB S D Burman song in Talaash? And that Talaash song seems to contain the seeds of mai.nne dil abhii diyaa nahii.n from The Train, the soundtrack that marked the entry into Bollywood of the music company formerly known as Polydor (it since became PolyGram which became MIL which became Universal).

How can you sleep at night by using a euphemism like rightsizing to describe a layoff? Even euphemisms should have their limits.

the records of ultra-violet rule

A ghastly spelling like Yuvvraaj at least ensures that you can get your own domain (unless some challenged speller got there first for entirely different reasons). Ghai's next plunge features a lot of firsts. This is his first film with Gulzar as the lyricist. This is also his first film featuring Salman Khan and his first film featuring Mithun Chakraborty. Unless you count their cameos in the SRK vehicle Om Shanti Om (right; that song in Naseeb upset the delicate balance of connections back then too). It's also his first film featuring Zayed Khan. Now that's something. You've really got something stinking in your stable to get the likes of that form of life on the roster. First film to feature Katrina Kaif too. Does that even count as a record? The waif's a hit thanks to being great stuff to look at, figuring in a ton of brain-dead box office busters (Race, Singh is Kiing) and being in the news for being the muse of the beefiest cake in town. Choosing the cello as her instrument of choice is but an obvious move to attempt to steal the thunder of Celina Jaitley's bikini-clad violin stunt in Janasheen. For the sheer low coefficient of clothing, Ms. Jaitley might still emerge (no pun intended) the winner.

The still above offers some hints at what lies in store in Ghai's bloated opus. Salman Khan looks like he's blind; Anil Kapoor can't read; that old dame can't play and lassie can't figure out what she's doing in the frame. Meanwhile, the production design looks on. As a parting note, I believe the pronunciation of the film's strangely spelled name should be "U V Raaj" which adds a nice South Indian touch to the proceedings in addition to a certain unintentional nod to physics. Then again, UV rays are not visible to the human eye and this is clearly analogous to the film's merits. Over-exposure to UV rays causes sunburn; another analogy is plain to see. This spelling also fortifies a belief that Ghai is working on a light trilogy. After Black and White and UV Rays (it's not hard to go from Raaj to Rays), one wonders what the "showman" will come up with next. Yellow Mein Hari Piya?

local boo

Creative Loafing, the generous rag of witty riches, has filed for Chapter 11. This isn't as newsworthy as the mess in Wall Street (in which taxpayers lose their money while the executives of the bailed-out AIG partied at St. Regis Resort). Meanwhile, one of those space-filling op-eds on the state of MARTA shows up in the AJC. Insufficient funding and unfair restrictions. Blah blah. The piece doesn't talk about the complete lack of monetary input from the County of Cobb to MARTA, despite the progressive presence of MARTA buses at Cumberland Mall (especially on Sundays when the good ol' boys governing Cobb deemed it fit to shut CCT down). The presidential candidates, meanwhile, continue to "debate" offering more text that should be fed through text retrieval engines -- heck! build a tag cloud -- instead of really promising anything useful. It's the two Joes (Sixpack and Plumber) at one end and "despite being articulate he seems to have that cocky air that cost Al Gore the election to the friendly neighbourhood apocalypse." All they say is like some of those papers you study in graduate school or like abstract poetry -- you make your own meanings; they are essentially saying what you want them to say. They ain't talkin' nothin' that'd help me. Streamline the management of work permits and work visas. Fix your data management systems so that the DHS, USCIS, IRS and SSA resemble a homogeneous governing ecosystem instead of a tragically fractured version of Babel. Project Mayhem makes more sense than any of the drivel about "fixing" health care. Stop running it as a business. Same thing for this gasoline "crisis." It's all hopeless. Everything's a business. That rickshaw driver back home asking for "half return" ain't got a thing on governing bodies that just don't understand the importance of transit in resolving a problem of consumption. Oh well.

the oven of promise

The Nose has returned to pay tribute to one of the finest paeans to the feathered kind ever written in Bollywood, you are my chicken fry with a track off the forthcoming Karzzzz. The song's called Tandoori Nights; it must not be confused with that TV show featuring Saeed Jaffrey and it also holds no water to that Nagesh Kukunoor project called Tandoor that's seemingly stuck in development hell. This is not your average Chicken Tikkarzzzz ladies and gentlemen; this is not a patch in the slightest on the genius of the bejewelled Bappi. This is a predictably nasal earworm boasting nothing special. Sameer's lyrics, however, are quite promising (notice how he uses the title to fill in the creative gaps) right from the intoxicating mukha.Daa riffing in tribute to Anand Bakshi's antics in his collaborations with Viju Shah, even boasting a quote from a soul hit; Does anyone know where that short riff came from? I know I've heard it somewhere but the brain's a-baking right now:

the nose
(tak ta na na na (tandoori nights) * 3) * 2
samaa sharaabii dono jahaa.N sharaabii rut rawaa sharaabii diladaar ve
hawaaa sharaabii terii adaa sharaabii ye fizaa sharaabii diladaar ve

sunidhi
tanhaa tanhaa hai dil, tanha ##tandoori nights##
if loving you is wrong, I dont wanna be right

the nose
rabbaa rabbaa merii jaan jale (jale (jale (jale)))

sunidhi
ta ta na na na (tandoori nights) * 3

the nose
tere bin, tere bin merii jaan jale (jale (jale (jale)))


sunidhi
ta ta na na na (tandoori nights) * 3

both
(ta ta na na na (tandoori nights) * 3) * 2

active intransitivity

Is it just my brethren (read: holders of an Indian passport or bearers of an Indian PAN card or recipients of a fat monthly income commensurate with their ability to churn out code that make Halahala look like Kwality Ice Cream) or are other people afflicted by the rather curious tendency to confer the status of ambitransitive upon verbs when using them in the present continuous tense. It's either that or an incorrect switch from passive voice to active voice. The do-ee appears to become the doer, but it's only a deception. A grammatical wolf trying to pull the wool over your tired eyes. Consider the line "The page is not displaying" -- my friend, "to display" is a strictly transitive verb; this means that the displayer has to display something. Perhaps you meant to say "The page is not being displayed"; this would mean that you were trying to activate a passive entity, which is something that works in the context of freedom struggles and revolutions but not grammar. Cease and desist otherwise you will be killing.

cyberlink's user abuse

Let me tell about this little pile of buffalo offerings called Cyberlink PowerDVD DX. This software to play DVDs ships with Dell computers and represents a new nadir in software usability. Put your DVD in the DVD tray and slide it in and voila, this menace begins to start up (sometimes even bypassing the magic Shift key). In order to offer the best in convenience it "un-mutes" your speakers and turns up the volume so that, if you're sitting there with headphones on, your ears are in for an aural pounding. And if you shut the damn thing down, it even "mutes" your speakers so that you don't have to do it yourself. Did I mention there's no notion of saved "preferences"? After you've recovered from the sound blast and have managed to regain control of your mouse or the shortcut hardware controls to adjust the volume, you realise that you have to wade through all that "unskippable" guano thanks to the software's obsequious refusal to skip the UOP flag. If this is one of the DVDs that begins with one of those loud annoying anti-piracy ads, not even God can save your eardrums. All said and done once you've managed to get past the noisome studio logo and distribution dross and have finally started with the movie, don't worry about such useful things as a time counter. Just sit back and pray you don't have to start the DVD up again and put your ears through another ordeal of decibels. The only reason I don't use VLC is because it's decided to go batty and play DVDs in fits and jerks. If I wanted an epileptic meltdown, I'd ask for one. A pity. Time to get ready with another DVD now with fingers close to the special key in order to bring down the volume levels.

bappi's back and the truth hurts again

[thanks to Karthik over at I2FS for the pointer]

After raking in a load of dough with the Addictive victory a few years ago, Bappi's back in the news thanks to You Don't Mess With The Zohan using Jimmy Jimmy from Disco Dancer and giving him due credit. It's irony all over again and this time it's because the Bappi hit was a filch from You're OK by disco duo Ottawan. The Calcutta Times interview also includes the classic befuddling line Ottawan copied from me!. A 1980 song is a copy of a 1982 song. Who did it? The Time Traveller, no doubt.

maverick malik does it again: but no one noticed

In addition to being a font of trashy songs (disco bhaa.nga.Daa from Ganga Jamuna Saraswati, Daddy Cool from Chaahat) and the under-sung classic Do me a favour let's play holii (holii (holii (holii))) from Waqt: The Race Against Time), Anu Malik's also been a champion of the bold and shocking lyric. The stellar example was Sexy Sexy Sexy from Khuddar, a song that caused a storm not when the audio cassettes and CDs hit the market, but when the clips started doing the rounds on countdown shows (Karisma Kapoor's skimpy outfit didn't help matters much). The watered-down version (replace all occurrences of sexy with baby: mercifully, we didn't have lines like he's a sexy elephant) joined the film in the bin of the forgotten forever (a pity, since its convoluted plot and heady mix of Bollwood tropes offers great fodder for a meeting of the sofa spuds).

Years later, after going through an incongruous phase of being a critical darling for stringing decent melodies while working with above-average lyrics, Mr. Malik has returned to flood 2008 with stinker after super stinker starting off with Anamika. Another furball in the kitty was the limpid soundtrack for Love Story 2050 released on the day of American independence. This is a Bollywood skiffy featuring Priyanka Chopra as Zeisha and her man Harman Baweja making his début as a Hrithik Roshan-lookalike. Listen to the classic score that Vangelis conjured for Blade Runner and then weep, wail, lament and convulse in syncopated grief as you listen to Malik recycle tropes from You Only Live Twice (the opening string riff shows up in miilo.n kaa) and Jaanbaaz (Lover Boy's a.ntaraa starts off sounding like an Anu Malik melody and then starts sounding like rejected material from pyaar do pyaar lo). The little gem on the soundtrack is the fruit of a collaboration between Alisha Chinai and Mr. Malik (once again, since the Khuddar song had Ms. Chinai warbling about what people called her). The track opens with a soundscape of electronic sounds against with Ms. Chopra zestfully looping corny lines with as much oomph as in permitted in family-friendly soft-core fare:

Zeisha (pronounced: zaay-shaa). She's tomorrow's woman that yesterday spoke about. She's a mystery. She's an enigma wo (pause) ek raaz hai.

As the track moves along the railroad of rejected samples, Ms. Chinai renders an oh-so-familiar onomatopoeaic riff, before launching into the line that marks a new frontier for Mr. Malik:

Hey you, lover boy. Will you be my toy?

Over and over and over just so that you don't miss it. Lest you are confused, this film was never (I repeat never) going to be called Toy Story 4. The next line, when it finally shows up, registers a knell of danger: kheluu.N khilono.n se phir to.D duu.N; Ouch. Does this mark the first ode to Steely Dan III from Yokohama in Bollywood? "All I can say is that we have not left any musical note or poetic phrase unturned" says lyricist Javed Akhtar in the liner notes. But only the macrobian Mr. Malik could have shown the way. Ave Anu.

killing of the green

The latest bill from a utility company looks different, it's more compact. One of the notes offers more information:

We are pleased to introduce our new and improved monthly billing statement featuring an updated design, new colours, easy-to-read layout and improved arrangement of resident account information.

Sure. Whatever. A drop in rates or a concession would have been more welcome, since the old format wasn't as confusing or intimidating as a BellSouth phone bill. Going green with e-billing is, however, a good way to cut down on the paper trails and stacks in your house (or wherever it is that you store your statements and bills). An electronic version is easier to store, back up and carry around.

However, the final note mentions a new e-bill service. This means I can "go green" and "go paperless" (except in the hall of judgement, if you're living in the US of A).

There's been a strange surge of campaigns for going green. The commercial real estate company owning your office building was probably handing out energy-saving 30 watt bulbs. There are probably handouts sitting a tray (let's ignore the trees killed to create those handouts) championing green computers and pro-green HVAC settings. In a city like Atlanta, you'll also get the "drive less go green" camp, whose arguments are weaker than those of the "drive less save money on gas[oline]" camp. All this is fine and dandy, but I'm waiting for the tax subsidies. There's nothing like a tax cut to get more people involved -- expecting people to go green merely for warm and fuzzy reasons like "saving the environment" or "making it a better place for you and for me" isn't practical.

On the other hand, you will always have utility companies like Georgia Natural Gas that still do not give you a chance to stop the paper bill. You can sign up for OCC (Online Customer Care), you can now even make payments through their online portal without a fee (instead of using your bank's e-Bill Pay service), but you cannot stop them from sending you a paper copy of that PDF you just downloaded. In the eloquent words on the "Electronic Bill Notification" page, You will continue to receive a paper bill. No chance of seeing the Green Green Gas of Home (sorry for that bad paperless pun).

DVD synopses

While casually eploring the catalogue at the public library, I hit the page for a DVD of Pratiggya, a 1975 Dharmendra starrer: Here's the synopsis from the listing: Dharmendra secretly goes under cover and gets revenge on the person that took his childhood and family away from him. "Secretly goes under cover"? As opposed to "loudly"? Makes sense if you consider movies like Haveli, in which Marc Zuber spent his time telling everyone he met that he was an undercover cop and that they shouldn't tell anyone.

Bollywood DVDs have long boasted some of the most entertaining synopses. A trip to the local Indian grocery store can prove rewarding as you scan the paragraphs on the backs of the numerous covers on the shelves. Laced with sentences that betray an uncomfortably weak grasp of English grammar, idioms and vocabulary, the synopses often end by posing a set of questions to the reader -- these aren't questions of the kind that plague the existence of a PhD student but questions that are more on the lines of teraa naam kyaa hai basa.ntii?.

A few samples exist in the archives of this basket of bile: Aag Se Khelenge, Trimurti). There is, however, always more grass in the field where that cow came from. Consider the synopsis of Baaghi, which includes the nugget: [...] Sajan along with his friends rescues his love from the brothel and feels happy about it (also note have Kajal becomes Kajol by the time the synopsis is done).

We end with the synopsis of Naaraaz, which revels in the strict cliché stereotyping, high concept character development and the catastrophically convoluted tapestry of coincidence that passes off for plot in Bollywood.

NARAAZ is a strange love story of two friends who are from opposite backgrounds.

We are thus introduced to the concepts of foreground and anti-foreground; since these never attain the appropriate quantum states in Bollylore, such buddies rarely destroy each other, despite the presence of a temporary mandatory conflict.

DEVA (Mithun Chakraborty) is from a low caste poor family and due to this kind of background, he is an angry person.

There's a sample of the abuse of the material conditional; low caste implies kashT and someone who's very very frust. gariibii implies gussaa. It must also be noted that well-off low caste people don't make very good subjects in Bollysagas.

There is a dramatic confrontation between the two loving friends who are both angry with the society following opposite paths.

That bit hints on the Dilemma of Societal Divergence, a theme common in numerous reeling excursions served up by the Bollyfilm fraternity (sorority too, whatever).

There's more where all this came from. But the archaeology of the asinine must wait for another day. In the meantime, the plots of Bollyspiced dishes, often complex enough to discombobulate the best experts in correlation and chaos, deserve their space. But that too must come in good time. Bhuvan Panda said it right: bhuukh ke binaa bhog swaadishT nahii.n lagataa. It's time to bring on the hunger first before the meal is served.

more power to few

Amogh points me to a article about supermarket juggernaut Tesco replacing its signs to say "up to 10 items" instead of the grossly incorrect (and yet colloquially acceptable) "10 items or less." The article also includes helpful notes on the difference between less and few for those interested.

In closing, may I serve up a tidbit from an old issue of the World Wide Words newsletter: A mother in Stockport got Marks and Spencer to correct a grammatical error (an incongruous apostrophe) in text on a pyjama top. In the newsletter, Michael Quinion notes perhaps it could amend the "Five items or less" notice that I spotted on Friday in the Bristol branch. The Tesco change might offer a glimmer of hope. I don't think we'll see a change as far as the TV show and the film are concerned.

don't they call it steadicam for a reason?

Aesthetic choices in recent action thrillers seem sharply at odds with what I can stomach when I watch them. Two recent movies, the Will Smith blockbuster Hancock and the Don Cheadle vehicle Traitor, found their merits overshadowed (nay squelched) by creative choices in the departments of cinematography, editing and colour grading.

In addition to its other problems (a promising germ of an idea sacrificed at the altar of Akiva Goldsman and eclipsed by the star power of Will Smith) Hancock boasted footage guaranteed to induce motion sickness, headaches and general annoyance. All the stunts and special effects, all the simple dialogue sequences, all the simpler establishing shots were charged with the anxiety of an incontinent person desperately trying to find a ceramic seat of solace. While bobbing in ecstasy, the shots also swing in and out of focus (mostly out) making one wonder if these represented experiments in combining the techniques of action thrillers and those of cinéma-vérité. When this stylistic approach is extended to the action sequence, one laments the lack of dollars to fund a simpler, more coherent and more effective approach.

Traitor takes a great premise, interesting ideas and a serious earnest performance by Don Cheadle and sets them up against a battery of technical clichés that mount an assault on the senses that is comparable to the terrorism in the film. Clearly in the running for the award for low average shot length, the film employs desaturation and oversaturation of colour randomly (I'm sorry I didn't get the "different look for a different locale" device), enthusiastic energetic cuts even in the calmest of moments (the familiar flash-cut technique from Japanese horror films also makes an appearance) and, of course, the faux cinéma-vérité. The material is more engaging than in the Will Smith vehicle and manages to soothe the senses. There are sequences that are familiar to viewers of thrillers; and yet, what little remnant suspense they may hold is eroded by editorial decisions that seem to come from a different school of thought. Had it switched to a simpler mode of cinema, this film, despite its rather cursory handling of interesting characters and ideas, would have, thanks to Cheadle's performance as Samir Horn, been a lot more watchable. It was a surprise to see Aly Khan -- I remember him from Banegi Apni Baat, Private Detective and S4H3.

If you want to see how to shoot an action sequence more effectively, look no further than The Dark Knight). If you want to learn how simpler effective cinematography can contribute to your narrative (especially when you seem to have technically competent creatively challenged people on board), go watch the films of Sidney Lumet. And please add a note on your film poster about how shaky things can get. If I wanted to throw up (especially after a buffet at one of the many local Indian restaurants), I'll know which hall to walk in.

white comanche: when the B stings

A very very good reason to watch White Comanche is that it features William Shatner in a double role. It gets even better when you find out that the man who made the howl "Khan!" a classic plays twins born of a white father and an Indian (read: the American kind) mother; hence, the title, O gentle reader. Thanks to the uneven distribution of genetic contributions from each parent, one's more American/White and the other's more Indian/Comanche. After exercising his chops playing evil alter egos of James Tiberius Kirk, Shatner found the perfect project to unleash one of his finest slices of smoked ham. Since it's Shatner playing both parts, the differences between them are subtle: the American twin is named Johnny Moon and spends most of his time in the film fully-clothed, while the Comanche twin is named Notah (which means "Snake") and rides about topless with a foul mood and a mean streak. The acting, led by His Highness Ham Kirk himself, is lamentable and the dialogue is loaded with strings of surreal non sequiturs and flights of facetious fancy (eat the peyote, drug of the devil – dream your dreams of hate!). Joseph Cotten had notched up a formidable list of credits on B-schlock and foreign productions (Syndicate Sadists showed up in the following decade) and shows up here as the Sheriff, spitting his lines with professional distance. A special note must be made of the background score that mixes Morricone and echoes of cues from Star Trek: The Original Series along with a strange blend of skiffle and brass.

Such names as Cotten and Shatner most likely seemed spectacular struts for the producers of this enterprise, but they bargained not for the power of the one playing two. Should you not be able to summon the courage to endure this enterprise (no pun intended), you may wish to skip ahead to the climactic duel between the two brothers. It starts off with an exchange of lines whose order may have relied on pure combinatorics and momentous metaphors:

Notah: Johnny Moon!
Johnny: Up here.

Johnny: You're as the wild duck that sits on the pond.
Notah: I have promised my people you will burn in the fire.
Johnny: I'm coming down.

SYN/SYN-ACK/ACK was so much easier. The quid pro quo builds up to a final duel -- both men, bare to the waist race their horses towards each other as they try to get a good shot for a kill; Notah's war cries punctuate the beginning and end of each run. It's worth the price of admission.

tapestry

(in which he shares some pointers to online treats)

The Parallel Universe Film Guide combines the detail of Wikipedia and the unlimited expanse of a creative mind on the loose and serves up a buffet of reelfests that exist only in the ether of its pages. A few samples include I Know What You Ate For Breakfast, its sequel I Know What You Did That Day Last Week You Took Off For So-Called Religious Reasons and The Erotic Neurotic. There isn't a Scott Of the Antarctic, but there's enough for a chuckle or two.

If you've had enough grief dealing with all the cruft scattered about your hard disk like confetti by various applications in the MSFT Windows universe, try CCleaner. It's small, fast, free and extremely effective (it took less than 45 seconds to determine that more than 1 GB of assorted scattered bits of binary poop would not be missed and cleaned it out all out in less than 35 seconds).

Ever noticed the product placement for Cadbury's chocolate in Andha Kanoon ? there is no such thing as free lunch[sic] said Akshay Kumar in Aitraaz, a film that also had Annu Kapoor going Karbuuzaa Kud chaakuu ko majabuur kar rahaa thaa ki aa kaaT; ##come and slice me##.

I leave you with a pearl of wisdom buried deep in a line of dialogue from Tauba Tauba, one of the few films in Payal Rohatgi's skin-flick kitty: When everything is nothing, then i'll show you something. As Bappi Lahiri sang (with Kishore Kumar and Mohd. Rafi, no less), nothing is impossible.

stuck in the groove

terii aa.Nkhe.n bhuul bhulaiyaa (hare raam hare raam) from Bhool Bhulaiya was admittedly catchy and well-mixed. But it's also one of those sticky lingering artifacts of a music director's work that refuse to fade away as he/she moves to the next project. I can't shake off that feeling of hare vu as I listen to tuu hai merii soNiye from Kismat Konnection and bas ek ki.ng from Singh is Kinng -- that Neeraj Shridhar, who belted out the original song of devotion and skimpy damsels, shows up again on both tracks doesn't help matters.

It happened when Vishal-Shekhar moved on from Cash -- the rhythm track in Tashan's chhaliyaa owed something to naa puuchh. And when Raja Hasan's voice broke out on maarii tiitarii in De Taali, it was as if he had begun to sing taalii bajaawe (Tashan me.n) from Tashan.

If memory serves me right, A R Rahman's Taal leaked into one of Padayappa or Sangamam (all I remember is my reaction; alas, I wish I could be confident about the Tamil film).

This isn't meant to stray into territory covered by long discussions on the "signatures" of music directors or on how they reuse their tunes in part (an interlude in one song becomes the mukha.Daa of another; a motif on the background score evolves into a song for playing hide-and-tree) or whole (Hridaynath churned out a robust melody for Lata to sing both Ghalib's rone se aur and Lekin's suniyo jii). This is thus not the place to mention that kisakaa hai ye tumako i.ntezaar mai.n huu.N naa (Main Hoon Na) was born as dha.Dakataa hai dil in Baazi; this is not the time to note a little interlude on the flute in Abhay's koyal-sii milii tumako prefigures the title song of Kal Ho Naa Ho.

Rajesh Roshan found inspiration in When Johnny Comes Marching Home when he delivered na bole tum na mai.nne kuchh kahaa in Baaton Baaton Mein (Had you already watched Stalag 17 or Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, you'd have been wise on the lift; or perhaps it took the third edition in the Die Hard saga to jog your memory). Have you ever noticed how that tune shares a lot with the title whistle in A Fistful Of Dollars?

We end with offering a musical reason to remember and talk about skin flicks. Wild Orchid, one of the more famous works in the canon of Zalman King, boasts an interesting soundtrack, a song from which, Bird Boy features prominently in a scene as the camera follows Mickey O'Rourke and Carré Otis walking -- that melody showed up later to contribute to Nadeem Shravan's success with koii na koii chaahiye in Deewana; years later, Anand Raj Anand made jaane kyaa hogaa raamaa hay in Kaante). And if you want to hear that loop from maa.Ngataa hai kyaa from Rangeela, go watch Emmanuelle in Space.

ooh la la la ... raindrops keep falling on my head

one man, one take, one stunt

Titus Tinnitus is back. As the Melodious Monty all set to melt the earwax and the Rhinal Romantic all set to breathe new life into allergic clichés, the Nasal Nawab impresses his fans with another stellar achievement: a stupendous display of jumps, kicks and yells (a tribute to the late Bruce Lee, no doubt) for an action sequence -- and in a single take at that.

An audio feed of the event would no doubt have sounded like this: and ... Action!! ... Tish. Tish. Tishuu.N. aa-Tishuu.N. Tishuu.N. ... uu.N uu.N. Tishuu.N. ... and Cut!!.

The bearer of Bollywood Bonanza Blower revealed the secret of his ability to deliver such an efficient single take:

I am a huge movie buff and have grown up watching only movies. I have watched each superstar carefully and every good performer is like a guru to me. They are inspiration to me. So acting comes as naturally to me as music. That is the reason I was comfortable doing those scenes.

And I thought I was comfortable doing those scenes was usually something people tossed out when talking about sequences of on-screen intimacy. I like the implication that an inspiration is enough to fuel excellence. uu.N shaa.nti uu.N.

holy linguish!

Please tell me someone didn't get paid to write inarticulate (no pun intended) drivel like this (unless they were talking about Shahid Kapur's passion for photography).

The exploration of painful Inglish (that's Indian English for you puTTan) continues with a look at the shadow of a doubt. That's doubt used as a verb in a sense as to mean exactly the opposite of convention. Consider the statement I doubt that this is what is causing the problem. This does not mean, dear hapless reader, that the speaker does not believe that this is the cause of the problem. Au contraire da befuddlement. The speaker, should he/she own up to having an Indian passport, means to say that he/she suspects that this indeed is the cause of the problem. One pities the ears and eyes that are at the receiving end of such oppositely coded pronouncements. Should you choose to subject your brain to some more topsy loops, try the entry for doubt in Eric Partridge's Usage and Abusage.

Before the closing rites, let us pray for the soul of the dative case in German that seems to have inspired (without official credit, of course) concoctions like "I replied him yesterday itself" and "Can you explain me this?" Note that both examples sorely lack an appropriately placed "to." Note also the appearance of the familiar "itself" topping off the first example -- this word along with "only" serves to emphasise, assert and underscore what has transpired before it. Mind it itself. We are like this only.

In closing, allow me to recommend George Orwell's excellent article Politics And The English Language. One hopes that this encourages those that fight against the abuse of the apostrophe, against the singular decline of the plural, against the ubiquity of specious verbosity and crap-speak and noisome neologisms. You ain't never alone.

in which RGV writes and talks to enthrall

It's always fun to listen to RGV talk even though the films he's produced and directed of late have comprised some choice zingers and stinkers -- veritable challenges to the faith of his fans and those who still believe in him as a director. PFC snags a slice of the maverick filmmaker's time and gets him to go voluble on reel matters and familiar subjects. The fragments are a delight and one wishes they'd uploaded more material. One of the things that comes up a couple of times is the tussle between craft and content. The Breathing Method contained what has now become a classic Stephen King line (he even uses it to open Different Seasons, the collection containing the story): It's the tale not he who tells it. Arguably, the teller is inextricable from the tale (consider Satya directed by Karan Johar as an example -- It's all about loving your shooting). RGV brings it up too, noting that if people noticed the craft in his movies, he probably wasn't working with subject matter that was strong enough to hold the attention of the audience. The craft exists to bolster the content. That along with why he thought Om Shanti Om was the most honest film he had seen.

Meanwhile, back at his blog, a new post talks about the genesis of Rangeela and offers some fine words about Aamir Khan; it also casts an arc light on the cause of the famous tiff between the two while dropping an all-too-familiar name in the process. It takes a great deal of courage to write some of the things he's written there and the closing block says it all:

And before some minds out there jump to this conclusion that this is an effort on my part to patch up with him in order to do a film with him I want to categorically state here that I will never ever do a film with him and the reasons for that are:
(a). I am not as sincere or as committed as him.
(b). I don't have his patience.
(c). Above all I truly think he is a far better filmmaker than me.

One could be forgiven for mistaking all that he has said and written as some sort of sop to all his critics (although there's enough evidence that he doesn't care much either for sycophantic bearers of praise or of sprinklers of caustic bile), but there really can't be any denying his ability to entertain as an interview subject. Few Bollywood filmmakers can manage that.

[august 16, 2008]: Elsewhere, Baradwaj snags an interview with the man and watches how RGV turns the tables and takes control. It's also interesting to see (as BR has noted as well) how some of the things RGV echo his statements in the PFC interview (not to mention stuff on his blog).

capitalist JDBC and more lingua frantica

[with acknowledgements to JR for the samples we exchanged while discussing this many months ago]

Is it money, phone plans or calling cards? What affects the mind so much that you describe prepared statements as prepaid statements?

Homophones are a great cause of mirth and misery. Like the times people write "in sink" instead of "in synch" -- or were they offering subtle commentary on Timberlake's band of yore?

Then there's the apparently Indian (aka desii) fondness for the past tense of will in statements. Would, when used correctly, conveys a sense of the past or of the remote conditional (e.g. I would have said that if I could, If I had wings, I would fly) or even the touch of the formal (e.g. I would like a glass of water without ice please). But the desii take is a unique improvisation. Reading lines like I would be doing this tomorrow or I would be coming in late [did he/she mean I would be coming in late if I could? -- a case of elision feeding ambiguity that's highly unlikely] makes me cringe. Here's an article online (chosen purely at random, mind you) that opens with a salvo of teaky torture. I really wish they wouldn't do that.