Sherlock Jr (1924)

With a deadpan expression and quick fire antics, Buster Keaton makes the already short 44 minutes of Sherlock Jr go by in a flash. He works at a theater but is studying to become a detective. The girl he is interested in is also being wooed by a cad. The bad guy foists a burglary on Buster and has him kicked out of the girl's house. A depressed Buster goes back to work at the theater and falls asleep on his projector. He finds himself dreaming and in his dream melds into the screen of the movie being shown. The movie within the movie has all the people in his life transposed with him onto the screen. Hilarity ensues including a scene where he gets pulled over by a cop for speeding - for running too fast on the road. It had me in splits. The other brilliant sequence is one in which the background continuously changes behind Buster after he literally steps into the movie. There are a few dialog slides but the actors' expressions and body language convey volumes. A great way to spend 44 minutes

The close-up frames that show detail, the switching of shots between the protagonists and the somewhat exaggerated facial expressions make sure that nothing the director wanted to communicate is ever lost. Silent movies are lessons in communication.

Lostalgia

Someone blogged about it first and someone else started a wiki that lists some obsolete skills. You know the stuff that you used to do but no longer need to because either the technology has changed or the times have changed. That set me thinking. What about all the skills that you haven't had a chance to practice as much as you did before. Not just skills, but also habits that you unfortunately shed because, well, you are now grown up.

I was blessed with a unique knack for losing things when i was in school. Pencils, especially the DMK friendly red and black ones made by Messrs. Nataraj & Co, were my favorite to buy and to misplace. They would go from the stationery store to a black hole under my bench, stopping briefly for a sojourn in my pencil box and a dalliance with the sharpener. Rulers (yes Camel or was it Camlin, ones with a ridge in the middle), would wait at the bottom of the same pencil box till the pencils got sucked by the black holes and would then make a break for it, never to measure line segments again. My only hope is that the critters inhabiting the netherworld below benches got an education through my generous donations. These days the keyboard has replaced the pencil and has proven a lot more difficult to lose beneath my desk. I tried requesting a new one on that premise, but was turned down.

At various stages in my life, one person or another has exploited the long limbs that came free with me at birth. To the disdain of several high rise shelves, I was always around to rescue bottles and jars from their lofty clasp. The only problem with that was the cumbersome nature of said limbs. They would get in my way often and I fell victim to their long reach. Literally. After tripping on objects that were measurably meters away, I would often come back home with an injury and a slightly lower count of antigens A and Rh+. The protective cushion of my cubicle walls and a zealous avoidance of anything but spectating of sports has meant that my stockpile of differently shaped bandages circa 2003 is intact as are all my antigens (touch wood).

I thought I'd grown enough over the past year to kick this writing habit but then I joined twitter this past month. I was sucked right back in - 140 characters or less at a time.

Also where amazing happens

The map they hand you when entering giant log gates of the West entrance does have a scale legend on one corner, but it gives no indication of the amazing journey you are about to embark on. Like frantic ants in a candy store, we stopped at every possible visual cue that seemed to indicate a treat. First it was a few elks lazing on a riverside. After shooting them to the extension of our zoom lenses, we were back on the road, only to slow down to a crawl behind a few cars. Before we could wonder why everyone had stopped, a trio of bison strolled (rumbled?) across the road, one right in front of our car. For someone who has never seen bison before, they can best be described as cows that, when not grazing, hit the gym. These bulked up jockeys of the bovine world were quite content to graze and walk slowly among cars, while occasionally scaring us off with a snort. Driving on, tracts of mysterious, smoke emitting grounds lured us in for a quick walk. 45 minutes later we realized this was not going to be quick at all and all we were looking at was boiling water - a breathtaking sapphire pool of boiling water through which,with a little imagination, one could peer into the netherworld. Between the smoking earth, the resting elks and bison outside our car window, Yellowstone, with its splendors, had begun to seep in to our memories within the first few hours. It will take me a bit more time to dig up more metaphors and adjectives to write about the subsequent hours of that trip. Do hang on.

Jai Ho

So I spent parts of the weekend plagiarizing Shepard Fairey's Obama poster and making it fit the occasion better. No words this week. Only an image and great pride at sharing a hometown with A R Rahman.


Note: The image is from a google image search. I have no idea who took it but if you did, let me know so I can credit you properly. The original,iconic poster is by Shepard Fairey. The steps I got from this post (Thanks, Rick, whoever you may be) : GimpTalk. It's easy if you have Gimp and Inkscape (both are free!!).

Ports Illustrated

My wife and I fly quite a bit. So airports play a somewhat important role in our lives. Here's a disconnected paean/rant about two of them. (Current, satisfied?)

MAA was where I first set foot on a flight - the one that would take me out of India for a while. Obviously it trumps any airport. If you haven't heard or are not human, returning home is the best feeling ever. You are in for a surprise as you get out of the plane at MAA though. Water molecules that were relaxing in their subdermal, cellular residences, rush out to greet the parched atmosphere with a frenzy. The water carriers (us) are pleasantly surprised/highly annoyed when we find we have taken a shower without asking for one. Quickly finding yourself standing next to similarly sweaty/glowing co-passengers, cooped in a bus taking its time around the tarmac, doesn't help your extra sensitive olfactory nerves. Inside the airport, you find that MAA has learnt from it's western counterparts and is now charging Rs.35 for a tiny cup of coffee and Rs.40 for 12 pieces of chiclets. You will need to sell aircraft that you do not own to buy a samosa and some ketchup. The paper plates are free.

You need to be wary of any airport that has terminals 1,2,3 and 5 but not 4. I liken ORD to the mofussil bus stands in Chennai. The only thing missing are the hawkers and handkerchiefs on seats. Buses..er..flights operate on ORD Standard Time, a timezone that always extends beyond your flights ETA. Instead of conductors yelling 'Mayaram, Mayaram' or some other destination and banging on the sides of buses, there are irate gate attendants. Go on a Friday evening and you can find them yelling for people to give up their seats in exchange for a later flight or a hotel room and a round trip ticket. I wonder if someone can stay at the airport indefinitely by just paying for one ticket and then giving it up repeatedly for more tickets. Anyway terminal 3 really has the best choice for food. When buying a sub causes a credit check to be triggered, wouldn't you rather have a choice? Can someone really explain what is there in the food at airports that makes them so exorbitant? Gold dust??

Finger chips and pics

I am not one to speculate on Intelligent Design. I just have a hard time believing an intelligent designer who failed to recognize how the human mind may evolve manifest. Let us randomly, and without ulterior blogging motives, take an aspect of life - photography. If the omniscient intelligence had foreseen how much we will want to capture day to day life visually, shouldn't it have factored in a USB port or two into our fingers. For a force that gave us a nearly infinite memory, the USB port could have been slipped on in the time it took to design that completely useless appendix. Instead of a vermiform vestigial structure, that may or may not cause extreme pain, we would have a way to just plug ourselves to a 46" HDTV and show off some pics from that recent trip to Disneyland. Of course, you will need built-in censoring software. But that should take no more time than it takes a pair of cherubim to change a light bulb.

As it is, I don't have a USB port or two. My memories are captured on a finitely limited memory card and stored on apparently unlimited storage that I purchase for $25 a year. I occasionally (read always) harass family and friends into looking at my experiments with light and have written about it before. There is still a long way to go but, over the past year or so, I have had some help improving. The better of my halves is a really good photographer and we've had quite a bit of fun shooting together. It only makes sense that when I run out of words for a post, I supplant it with what our viewfinders found. Coincidentally, I just exhausted my vocabulary. She is on the left, my half on the right.

Suddenly

Suddenly, you realize that this song is mind blowing. You wanted to use a complex simile to compare the steady vocals and slightly audible violin strains to something in nature, but you can't. The song has infected areas in your brain responsible for similes and hearing is the sole sense you are aware of. The song rises in a crescendo, letting a wonderful orchestration take center stage before the vocals return and then it slowly recedes to a ripple. Dil gira kahin par daf'atan.

The lyrics are supposed to be good. I'll pay attention to them after I've had my fill of the music. The Delhi-6 soundtrack sounds like Rahman grew his long hair back and just let loose on the recording floor. If this is how the rest of '09 will roll out musically, it is going to be a happy new year for his fans.

p.s Daf'atan, I found, is Urdu for at once, instantaneously, suddenly.

Suspicion (1941)

Suspicion is a rather alarming title for a rather light flick from the master of suspense. I'm guessing it was conjured by RKO Pictures' marketeers to capitalize on Hitchcock's record of thrillers. A fast talking Cary Grant, mesmerizes Joan Fontaine and despite protests from her father, she goes on to marry Cary. Cary plays Johnnie Aysgarth as a flippant trickster who repeatedly causes Tina McLaidlaw (Joan Fontaine) to doubt his intentions. Then he reels her back in with an act that indicates that he has changed. Tina vacillates between trust and distrust till she finally dispels her suspicion.

The book from which the screenplay was adapted, was apparently much darker and ends with the Johnnie character killing Tina. The DVD also had an alternate ending fashioned by Hitchcock that showed this. The movie would have been much better had it ended that way. This is yet another case of the studio meddling with the director's true intentions. Despite being unaware of this while watching the movie, I never thought Cary Grant looked menacing enough. He plays Johnnie with much levity and lacks the smarminess that can convince us of his darker intentions. Coming out only a year after Rebecca, Joan Fontaine is asked to play a mature woman compared to the subservient nameless girl and does well. IMDB says that this was hers was the only Oscar winning performance that Hitchcock directed.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

If Changeling is Angelina's vehicle to the awards, Benjamin Button's frail and withered form is the horse on which Brad is betting. Eric Roth takes F.Scott Fitzgerald's short story and attempts to make it into a fable. In the process he also extends it to a length that is just beyond the reach of one's patience. Button is born with an old man's body, a part that Pitt plays wonderfully. He then proceeds to grow younger, really slowly. Among all the weird characters that accept Button's affliction without flinching, his dad who finds him a freak is the only normal one. If you experience a heavy Forrest Gump undercurrent, do not fret. Eric Roth also adapted the screenplay for that movie and has adopted a similar narrative style with Button even sounding like one of Gump's Southern cousins. But for someone born as a grandpa, his fairy-tale lacked the magic. Like the screenplay, it relies on gimmicks and has no real story. The only thing I was curious about was when it would all end.

Slumdog Millionaire

We have always been suckers for underdogs. Maybe we see something of ourselves in every David who takes on the seemingly invincible Goliath. Maybe a part of us aches to be the common man who rebels against the establishment. 'Slumdog Millionaire' taps into this springwell of emotion while lulling the nearby center of logic into a nap. The David of this story is a young Jamal who finds himself at the center of an implausible run of events that has left him close to winning millions in a gameshow. These events are running on a track that Jamal hopes will take him to his final destination, his love, Latika.

The screenplay is the prime mover of this movie. It whizzes you through like a fast train to Borivali. It does not stop to give you the Lonely Planet spiel about Mumbai. It cannot for the only objective of this movie is to tell the story of Jamal, not to add to your general knowledge. This it does through a series of flashbacks. We are taken along for the ride to watch the kid grow into a man and then to cheer him on when he is at the threshold to riches. The camera captures much of this ride wonderfully exposing a side of Mumbai that is not seen very often. Given that the narrative doesn't bother to provide the explanation, the camera pulls off the double duty expertly, showing us what we need to know. Back to the screenplay, there are no incidents to show how observant Jamal is or how fantastically photographic his memory is. Nothing at all that really explains how he knows obscure trivia. You just understand that he needs to be on his feet just to survive in a world which treats his ilk as something disposable. The out of place luxury in his otherwise slumdog life is his love. This he pursues despite the dire circumstances he finds himself in.

All 3 actors who portray Jamal fit the role like a T. But Dev Patel has the most scope and doesnt waste an inch of screenspace offered to him. From dogged determination when he is looking for his love to silent pain when she turns him out of her house, his earnest face conveys them all with ease. The camerawork again adds to this via some nicely composed close ups and great lighting. Irrfan Khan walks on as the police inspector who in listening and questioning Jamal, substitutes for the audience. From language to body language, he essays the role perfectly. The other characters are aptly cast but the Jamals are brilliant.

Though there are images moving on the screen for the first few minutes, the chant of O..Saya is what really kicks this movie off. Rahman's score sets the tone for several other scenes and showcases the creativity of the man in a format we are not quite used to. Even the bollywood musical style Jai Ho at the closing titles, while seemingly incongruent with the rest of the movie, is a fitting finale that the crowds need after watching Jamal triumph. The soundtrack has already won some awards but he is now up for a Golden Globe and despite being a household name in India, is a relative unknown to the West among the other names in the race. I am rooting for him to bring this one home. Of course he doesnt need this validation, but this is one underdog for whom we have always been suckers. Jai Ho !

Fists full of fun

A little known corollary of one of Newton's laws states that the amount of fun a handheld object generates will quadruple every 2 years. By that count kids today are having about 18 million times the fun that I had growing up. Fun, during those childhood years, depended on the availability of certain things - a messy toy, an active imagination or at minimum, an irritable elder sibling. As a result on boring vacation afternoons, you could either do your holiday homework (the first oxymoron I inadvertently learnt) or worse, watch UGC programming on DD.

That was until the introduction of the handheld,technological revolution that was the ball maze. I never knew what it was called back then and I cant remember what I would call it when telling my mom that I lost it. Maybe that is why I never got in trouble for losing it - how can you lose something that never existed? But I digress. You know what I mean - round, plastic casing, transparent plastic window looking into a maze trapping two or more steel balls. Hours of my childhood were spent trying to defeat gravity and jittery hands in guiding those lonely balls to join the party at the center of the maze. If I got too irritated, I could just shake the thing hard and transfer my irritation to the elders. Alternatively I could just break the plastic on top and add those two balls to my growing collection of small, shiny metal balls. Later - go back to the exhibition, point to that round thing with my hand, rinse and repeat. I never counted how many of those balls I collected. Not enough would be my best guess.

The next stage of pocket playmates was with the somewhat strangely named water video game. At least my friends called it that and, caving to peer pressure, so did I. Since there was no video involved, the etymology remains suspect. If the ball maze taught one that intense concentration without success led to irritation, the water video game imparted the great lesson of patience. The rather simple interface consisted of a rectangular, water filled plastic case and one large, rubber button, only a little unlike the interface of a fruity phone. Depressing the button caused some behind the scenes magic and the water reacted by churning and causing tiny plastic rings to float up. Did I mention transparent plastic window looking into the water? There was one so you could watch in amazement as the rings would go up and then float down in extreme slow motion and in the process, attempt to drop over the swords of two vertically affixed swordfish. The objective was to somehow make sure you get the most number of rings on the stick..er.. sword. My strategy was to start off by applying violent pressure to the button and then praying fervently. Did I say that this was a variety of handheld fun? I apologize. This was clearly in the category of ancient Chinese water torture. The first part of my strategy of course soon led to the tearing of the button and the water would be reclaimed by the parched Chennai atmosphere with the same speed that a tanker full of water is drained into colored plastic pots. Turns out water was also the source of fun for this game and into the trash it went. To make life more pleasant, I had to revert to trapping strange worms and lots of leaves in horlick's bottles in the hope that they'd grow into butterflies or at least moths. Sadly, I wasn't allowed to carry that around in my pocket.

We can now play first person shooters and racing simulators in mind bending color on a device that is smaller than my water video game and the interactivity is at such a level that you can grow dogs virtually, let alone caterpillars. I am not jealous. In fact if there is one thing I've learnt, it is that nostalgia is infinitely marketable. My plan for world domination is to release the two games I described above as games for handheld devices and then watch them fly off the virtual shelves of app stores. However I am hoping there will be some magic happening between now and the release date so that these games automatically program themselves. I shall use the same strategy that I used while playing those games - concentrate intensely, wait and pray, fervently.

p.s The ball maze is already out - http://www.simiotica.com/index_amaze.html but I have high hopes for the water video game. Somewhere some kid is waiting to be taught patience.

Rebecca

Rebecca has been haunting me to get this posted for the last few weeks. The movie is a close to faithful adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier's book of the same name and Hitchcock, on the extras DVD, does not hide his displeasure, irked with the novel's lack of logic. A plain,young girl falls in love and marries a young widower. She goes to his mansion where she finds his first wife inhabiting, in spirit, the mansion and its residents. The glamorous Rebecca is the first wife and her death is the mystery that must be solved. It is rather striking that the young girl does not have a name while the iconic R of Rebecca makes its presence felt in every scene despite the fact that not even a photo of her is shown in the movie.The Criterion collection extras DVD had so many extras that I didnt have time to watch all of them before I had to return it. I caught the best of it though - screen tests and Hitchcock's remarks about more than 2 dozen leading ladies who auditioned for the part that Joan Fontaine finally got.

Daphne Du Maurier's other, more famous work is Gone With the Wind. Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind was also produced by David O.Selznick. Apparently he was working on Gone With the Wind when he decided to bring Hitchcock to work on other commitments he had undertaken. Good thing he did. He set Hitchcock free in Hollywood and this "other commitment" won an Oscar for best picture in 1941.

of really long songs

'Manmohini morey' from Yuvvraj is the longest Rahman song that I know of. The last time I heard it, it ran a continuous 35 minutes or so. Impressive for a song that Rahman originally tuned to run about 3 minutes. The song is a techno marvel sans the meaningless repetitive lyrics that always seem to accompany such beats. What lyrics there are, are sung in a classical style that one expects will pair with those beats like Wall Street and common sense. But the combination is an aural revelation which I would liken to to a beautiful fractal equation, if not for my utter mathematical ineptitude. This song might beat Yakkai Thiri for the longest Rahman song in my library. However there is no way it will get close to the sheer number of plays which stands closer to 10s of thousands.

In case it interests you, I also mused about the really short pieces earlier in this piece

Gambling on memory

The flame of the match did a brief, lively dance before it was snuffed out by the strong beach breeze. I lit a second one. Cupped with both hands, it lived the few moments it took to light the cigarette.

I took a long drag and looked over at my friend.

"Do you remember," the words were exhaled with the smoke,"the time we used to play cricket on this road? We used to spend entire afternoons here playing game after game."

Another long drag and more words came out more smoke,"That monument thing used to be the boundary. They always made me field there."

"Because of your exceptional fielding skills, I am sure," the friend offered slyly, and added,"And it's a memorial not a monument."

I glared at him and continued."I know every brick of that memorial", emphasizing the last word more to indicate annoyance. "I've climbed up and down those stairs so many times while waiting for someone with superhuman powers to come to the crease and swat the ball there."

"So you must know about the guy they built it for. I bet you a 100 that you can't name him." Words spoken by his confidence in my observation powers. The lack of those powers that is. But he was in for a surprise.

"That's the easiest 100 I've ever earned. His name was Schmidt. K A J Schmidt. Cough up the 100."

As he reluctantly pulled his wallet out, he asked,"So you really know all about that memorial?"

"Yes," I answered absent mindedly. My eyes were on that crisp 100 rupee note making its way out of his wallet.

"So for another 500, can you tell me when Mr.Schmidt carried out his heroics?"

I hesitated. I had never been good with dates. History class had always been a blur. The Industrial revolution while helping nations progress had also left an indelible low mark on my 10th standard marksheet. Maybe I should turn this offer down. Then I remembered the plaque on the bottom corner and blurted out, "1984. It was in 1984 that he drowned rescuing others from the sea."

The 100 rupee note started receding into the wallet like a turtle head into its shell. He smirked.

"Hah. He saved those souls in 1930. The monument was renovated in '84. Now how about that 500."

I remembered the other plaque on the inside clear as day now. I glanced back up at the vandalized memorial.

"I hate nostalgia."

This snap is from a while back. Some kind souls have since given the memorial a makeover.

keepin' it real

i switched on the tv last night expecting to see Hillary recite paeans to the democratic donkey and barack. for a moment i was startled to see jerry springer introducing a group called the dc cowboys. as 7 men started to square dance, i thought to myself, god what has the DNC turned into. my shock subsided as i realised it was the tuesday night episode of 'america's got talent'. this is what comes out of having a garishly decorated stage with multiple large LCDs at a political convention.

reality shows are the fake swiss army knives of television. they fill in the empty void of the idiot box during summer, help americans learn how voting works (you start by flipping a cell phone open) and are incredibly dull . from choosing the chef most capable of cursing at his/her employees while garnishing foie gras to dogs that show character in the face of a trumpeting elephant, everything goes on today's reality shows. here are some ideas that show producers haven't thought of yet. they will get to these eventually (they have buildings full of rooms full of monkeys on typewriters). i am just speeding it up a bit

big fish little phelps
different shark species are trained by olympic coaches to perform synchronized swimming routines. the final winner gets to swim with michael phelps and compete for 4 of the 8 olympic golds. no fish will be hurt during the filming of this show. we cant give the same guarantee about phelps though. this will be judged each week by guo jingjing, manju bhargavi and eight cephalopod judges from oceans other than the ones that the sharks came from to avoid partiality.

this is real! really!
reality show producers compete with each other to produce the ultimate reality show. each week they will get a set of people on whom they will film a reality show and find out more inventive ways for at&t/verizon to suck people dry ..er.. maximize revenues. season 1 has clowns competing with iphone app programmers who are fighting with folks who think they can beat jim kramer..literally. notice how i cleverly left out a set of reality show producers thus avoiding the infinite loop it would have caused. this one is judged by the geico gecko and the aflac duck. who better to judge a reality show than a talking lizard and a duck that does not know how to quack.

3 AM
we are already watching this one. it is aired once every 4 years and lasts about 2 years. it starts with the donkey team and elephant team steadily eliminating one candidate after another till only the richest is left on either side. however this is the least real of all the contests. most of it is scripted to avoid a slight chance that one of the candidates utters the truth. variable such as a vulnerable diebold voting machine and random chads on will be available to add suspense to the proceedings. the show producers are seriously considering introducing cell phone voting as they found that american idol gets more votes than the population of the united states. the winner gets an alarm clock that will wake them up at 3 AM and a lifetime supply of rechargeable batteries. you can be the judge of this one.

an easy route to heaven

just so i make things clear, this post has nothing to do with religion. rather it has a lot to do with that philosophical place in everyone's mind that is referred to as heaven. it means different things to different people and i found mine relatively easily. all that was required was an awesome visit to india and then returning with suitcases loaded with sweets. i am getting ahead of myself

here then is the proper route to heaven. the ingredients you need are as follows ( somewhere between the title and now, the route became a recipe but the destination er.. objective remains the same)

1 superduper trip to india (getting married while there is optional..if you ask me i would like to get married on every trip)
1 suitcase full of adhirasam ( preferably the ones that were made as part of the wedding, or grand sweets at adyar makes equally good ones...murukku, mixture optional)
1 additional suitcase with backup adhirasam (some moron at the airline may reroute your adhirasam suitcase to San Diego, though the barcode clearly scanned for ORD)
1 microwaveable plate
1 microwave
1 fridge - 2 teaspoons ( i kid, i kid. everyone knows u need at least 3)

first frantically open the suitcase that has been delayed by about 48 hours to make sure your adhirasam packets are safe and then carefully, lest they crumble, transfer those ghee-fogged packets straight to the freezer. then, (this is very crucial) sleep well and lose the jet lag. now you are ready.

transfer one adhirasam carefully to microwaveable plate.if u dont have one, feel free to use the microwave's rotating plate. but please clean it first. more crucial steps follow so pay attention. once in microwave, set the timer to 30 seconds or lesser BUT dont let it stay there for the entire 30 seconds. if you did that you just created a veritable hockey puck/discus . rather after every five seconds, remove the plate and gently ( i didnt know how else to make this sound decent) assess the ahdirasam for softness. when sufficiently soft, remove plate from microwave. wait a few minutes, then when you cant take it anymore, break a piece of it and place it on your tongue. there. you just reached heaven.

monumental visage

kamal could've added just one more element and boosted dasavatharam to another level. instead of the introductory ilakkiya tamil sorpozhivu he engages in at that horrendous rendering of a stadium, he could've requested aby baby to do a voiceover. i'm guessing amitabh's tamil would fit between junoon tamil and khalifulla's ridiculous diction. so more unintentional fun for the tamil folks and instant love from our hindi speaking brethren. even better, kamal should've thought of a 11th role as amitabh but then the title wouldn't have fit.

apparently surveys done a few years back revealed that aby baby had the highest recall among desis. thus his face or voice is on nearly everything you use on a daily basis. he is on for some hair oil, pens, chocolate, suits, tvs, banks and so on. soon a stage will come when a kid watches sholay and will remark to his appa that jai looks strangely familiar to the thatha who was hawking bubble gum in the ad break that just ended. i think the indian govt should declare him a protected monument and levy fees from anyone wishing to use him (100 times more for foreign companies). in return, the ASI would give him therapy to keep his voice in shape, shave and shower him about once in 10 years and if needed conduct reconstructive plastic surgery. the simplest alternative is to invent cloning. that makes 2 folks i am recommending for cloning - 1 specializes in jooming, the other in selling.

kamal goes decimal

what does one do when in india for an extremely short amount of time, that too for a wedding - spend 3 hours at a multiplex watching sivaji's competition turn up a year late at the finish line and still manage to finish second. kamal spent 2 years making dasavathaaram, about 1.5 of which i am sure were spent putting his masks and wigs on and then removing them.

kamal plays god/fate of his own story as he unleashes several threads (10 to be exact) and then weaves them back into a small yet somewhat complete ladies handkerchief (what else can you weave with 10 threads). the magic of kamal is such that he manages to completely disappear in some of those threads letting the character take over the screen. balram naidu for one was outstanding. khalifulla on the other hand looked (and sounded) like one of the masked sivajis from uthama puthiran. with most of the characters donning prosthetics, kamal's vivid expressions were missed quite a bit. body language and voice only go a certain distance.

the story is indeed novel for a tamil flick and kamal does a fine job walking the fence between the mass and the elite. keywords (chaos theory anyone) are sprinkled to pique the interest of the elite while the mass is entertained with some good fight sequences and for a while by an ex-cia agent / part time stripper/full time killer who in addition to fluent tamil also knows the way to heaven. seeing her talk tamil was like watching jackie chan speak tamil in the afternoon star vijay movies (for those who havent seen police story in tamil, it is very similar to shriya speaking tamil in sivaji).both sections of the crowd are however bound to hate asin who screamed like a banshee whenever she opened her mouth. the music was a huge letdown. kamal could've at least courted illayaraja for some tunes.

all in all, a jolly ride. one of the two main aims i had when coming to chennai is now fulfilled :)

post flight postcard post

international flights have their share of contradictions. 6 foot 2 economy class passengers (me) are expected to squeeze into seat spaces measured in cubic inches, yet the petite air hostesses struggle to reach up and close overhead bins on those humongous 777s. i requested and got the emergency row seating on each leg. it's next to the toilet and usually a lot of screaming kids but it cant be beat for the comfort. put in an excellent on-demand entertainment system and i am all set. 3.75 movies were taken off my to-see list.

back in madras for my wedding, i am enjoying this trip more than any in the past. the weather is awesome, bhelpuri from shree mithai and mango duet from aavin complement it very well. my body composition is slowly changing from tofu and black coffee to paneer and filter coffee.

i'm finished

after nearly 3 years during which my senthamizh vocabulary grew by a smidgen, i am done with 'ponniyin selvan' [links to a review of the english version]. i rushed through the first 3 parts like an express train heading towards central but like the very same train hitting the maze of tracks at basin bridge, i slowed to a crawl for the last 2 parts. a small part of reading this was for gimmick ("hey look i am reading a tamil book"). but i started reading it because it is a historical retelling set in my own tamilnadu and is told in a language i love. a language that i am still not fluent enough to write in..hence this post in the step-mom tongue.

my next tamil book is a collection of crime stories by sujata. with any luck, you can expect a post in the summer of 2010