mughals in melody & triplicane

jodhaa akbar's music is out and it's good. google's servers will be busy for a while trying to keep up with word geeks looking up urdu words and their meanings. this post was going to be about how movies based on mughals have a couple of things in common - melodious music and a tragic storyline. turns out that out of the 3 films that i thought were mughal melodramas, only one was (mughal-e-azam). the other 2 i stereotyped purely based on their urdu names (pakeezah and umrao jaan). besides i havent seen any of them and i would never pretend to know more than i do (heh heh). so i guess all i am saying is that i thought i had a post but never mind. i'll go back to listening to jodhaa akbar.this one is clearly mughal and has some melodious numbers but is it also going to be tragic?

i am still listening to the sounds rather than the words but these piqued my interest enough to be looked up.. from 'in lamhon ke daaman' pakeezah means pure, kalma means word and was likened to om in one website or the 'word' as christians know it. at least a couple of the words in 'khwaja mere khwaja' can be referenced back to other rahman numbers - khalbali from rdb and rehanuma (apparently meaning guide) from udhaya - listen to 'thiruvallikeni rani'. (a nice song despite sukhwinder's attempt to once again mangle thiruvallikeni's fair name..apparently it was once thiru-alli-keni..due to a pond(keni) filled with lillies (alli) and became thiruvallikeni before the british with a slightly better tamil pronunciation than sukhwinder changed it to triplicane. wonder how rahman's hindi sounds to seasoned northy ears..doesnt sound all that bad to me.)

groovy, baby!

for the next few days i will not be able to shake your hand. neither will i be able to write properly and this post is being dictated to apple's dictation software. the reason for all this is screwdriverosis, the main and probably only symptom of victims of an IKEA trip. millions of carpenters all over the world are cursing ingvar kamprad for the DIY* madness that he has unleashed on the rest of the world while millions of hapless individuals happily succumb to this not so fatal disease in their hunt for bargains

we had a sofa set that had a black wooden frame and some sort of plastic intertwined over the frame forming holes of a multilateral shape. (btw we just stepped back about 20 years if those 2 'had's didnt give it away). we also had a dining table with a sun mica top made to look like wood. needless to say my family had no part in assembling either. when the plastic intertwinings gave way and started sagging after i had jumped on it a few hundred times, an intertwiner would be called up. he would take a seat in our hall and when plied with enough tea (and cash) restrung them to tensile strengths capable of bearing a jumping 8 year old. we later moved on, to a bigger flat and to a better sofa (ie one with no plastic). along the way we acquired a shoe rack that was so nicely crafted in expensive wood that it became a partial dresser and a solid but shoerack-like shoe rack that was wide enough for 4.67 shoes. both created under the influence of my mom's tea by a carpenter and his seemingly more talented apprentice. expert worksmen that they were, they even created a bookshelf with the remaining wood and added it to my room where it housed some computer books that i never read and a super-power memory book.

but none of these wooden marvels had ever had my fingers laid on them except after they were varnished and lacquered and in most cases also dried.

when i finally finished last night, the screw count was close to 2 scores. on the flip side my house is now home to pieces of furniture with exotic european names. in one corner vika curry and vika amon coupled to become the desk that holds my powerbook-monitor-keyboard-mouse-wires entity while flarke posed with grace befitting any tv stand, despite having to bear a non-lcd, non-hd, non-cabled TV. i've done what every budget-minded person does in these united states - put together a veritable menagerie of ikea furniture and have done so without making a single cup of tea. if i were more intelligent, i would start a deIKEAting institute where for a price, recent ikea victims can choose any piece of furniture and unscrew and dismantle to their heart's content. however no such thing exists. so, for a while, don't mind it if i refuse to shake hands next time we meet. it's nothing personal.

*DIY is short for Do It Yourself. in case you've always had others do your things for you or are living under a rock
^ IKEA stands for Ingvar Kamprad(the founder) Elmataryd(farm where he grew up) Agunnaryd (his home village)..or so says wikipedia..no wonder he shortened it, would've cost a lot of money for a super bowl commercial otherwise.
^ Here is an interesting quote from a woman who names the furniture:
"For bathrooms, it's Norwegian lakes. Kitchens are boys, and bedrooms are girls. For beds, it's Swedish cities. There's a lady who sits there and comes up with new names, making sure there isn't a name that means something really ugly in another language. But it doesn't always work. We gave a bed a name that means 'good lay' in German." if you have the time read the complete guardian article

what's up, doc?

after 16 years i realized that mahesh bhatt was an inspired man. dil hai ki manta nahin was not a movie i particularly enjoyed watching but watch i did, for whatever aamir khan touched those days was gold..actually it pretty much is today as well. i watched movies of his that no one else probably did - awwal number, love love love, daulat ki jung to name a few. and so it was that dil hai ki manta nahin was watched. i dont remember much of the movie..there is a watermelon song as my sister put it. and a kind of funny (then) hitchhiking scene where aamir tries and fails to stop a car while pooja succeeds with a display of her (shapely?) leg.

fast forward to a couple of nights back and i'm watching the exact scene unfold in black and white as claudette colbert stops a car while clark gable and his defeated thumb watch in amazement. this was in 'it happened one night'. the scene appears halfway..so,yes, it did not strike me till then that 'dil hai..; was a hindi speaking evil twin of 'it..'. i should've guessed as much. isnt he the same one who gave us criminal, which despite an alluring manisha, was still a straight lift from fugitive? someone please review his other movies and let me know where else i've been fooled.

a bit of trivia i gleaned from the wiki is that the hitchhiking scene, where gable chews a carrot while explaining the nuances of asking for a ride, is also one which inspired friz freleng to create a carrot chewing bunny named bugs...amazing , eh?, the amount of mutual inspiration film makers share.

a flickr of speech

i've never paid for someone to keep my stuff except during the early days of grad school.

back then a few hundred golts and fellow tamils invaded a university en masse and caused the "senior" grad students hosting us a lot of grief. our moms, deeming it necessary, had sent along a microcosm of india in 2 humongous bags fittingly called india pottis. so to add to the 10 or so parasites er.. new students being hosted in each one bedroom apt, several mini indias encroached the corners,sides and middle portions of all the rooms. when, one day, the hosts found that the bathroom had been rendered inaccessible by the great wall of india pottis, they decided to fight back. they rented some storage for us to keep them till we found apartments of our own. my 2 tamilnadus were in the first batch that were sent there. i thought that would be the last time i paid to store my belongings. how wrong was i?

an india suitcase at least has some substance to it (actually there is a lot of substance..ask the cranes that are used to lift them). what i am paying for now is a bunch of pixels..they are colorful and all that but they weigh next to nothing and in most cases carry not a single packet of grand sweets mixture or adhirasam. yet here i am touting their existence so i can get a few more hits and justify the $24.95 fee. damn you flickr!

here is what i said about this before and here is a sample that also doubles as a rather large hyperlink.

is it just me

or does timbaland's 'apologize'[youtube.com] sound a bit like new york nagaram[youtube.com]?

i've been wrong before though..

Letter to the Sculptor

dear madame tussaud,

kindly apologize our rude interruption of your wax modeling session. as you must already know, you recently held a vote to choose the next bollywood star to enter your museum and ended up choosing that poor boy salman. we dont know if you wanted to save the expense of making a wax shirt or you mistakenly thought his doll would make a good pair to that ash doll( you are reading an old edition of filmfare..ash is married to a banana tree, happily). our concern, as true tamizh fans, is that you are missing the big picture.

one of the greatest stars of our time is spending his life in relative reality while he is actually the one worthy of standing unmoved in your great hall. no we are not talking about the south indian superstar you might've also heard about. we're referring to the other superhero par super, the man who can freeze ice itself..the one and only captain.

we kindly demand that you start creating a wax figure for him. with two guns. like this. we realize that you might not have the requisite amount of wax to model him..such is his girthness and greatness. not to worry though. we solemnly pledge that from now on every true tamizh fan of the captain's will donate all the candles from his/her birthday cake so you will have a never ending supply of wax for the rest of your figurines.

please do the needful.now please go back to your waxing.

sincerely,
true tamizh fans of captain

p.s we just realized captain is a man of action..immobilizing him is a rather difficult task..we thought we'd warn you.

Azhagiya Tamizh Magan

ATM is out. Valayapatti and Nee Marilyn Monroe are my current favs. rahman remixing Ponmagal Vandhal was a shocker. For a moment people turned back the tape cover to ensure it was not a product from Yuvan or Mani Sharma. However I see that aslam is rapping for him in this song. At least I hope its him. Wonder if Lakshminarasimha Vijaya Rajagopala Seshadri Sharma Rajesh Raman fell out of favor.

valayapatti gets props due to the ragam mentions. ok ok i have no idea how to spell ragam but i'm still vaguely interested if only to act knowledgeable if i ever visit chennai during dec. kelaamal sounds a wee bit like 'aagaya vennilavae' from arangetra velai [youtube.com]. (the video deserves its own post, especially to describe prabhu's break dancing in the second half of the song).

going by the songs alone, looks like vijay is yet again a student. however i sincerely hope that the 'ella pugazhum' song is one that he sings to his kid as he sends him off to the first day of lkg classes. one can still dream.

gravity sucks (i obey inverse square laws)

after trying for about an hour to get a screenshot that

a. didn't reveal completely what i was doing but did enough to pique your interest
b. seemed to somehow show that i was frightened,excited or had an adrenalin rush
c. made me look good

i gave up

c is out of the question..skydiving is not makeup or plastic surgery. b didn't really happen..ok maybe i was excited just before and for a brief 2 seconds after i was pushed out of the plane.a is not possible either - human nature dictates that i brag about this so i don't really care about hiding things and piquing interests.

so you get the pic below..the all revealing, rather frightening image of me falling down with another guy strapped to my back. a minute later he saved me from going splat by opening the chute strapped to his back. the float down was a complete let down after the first couple of seconds of free fall. kind of like the scooter rides from childhood when you were made to stand in front.

so by all means go for a jump. it's kind of expensive. like many other things its hype exceeds reality and for god's sake remember to keep your mouth closed or you'll get an image like this. the video - i plan to sell it to parents as a scare aid to be used instead of the bogeyman or boochandi as the case may be.



p.s you dont know it but you just had a narrow escape.i was going to start this by explaining how i once fell from a mango tree sans parachute.but the screenshot extraction process frustrated the nostalgia out of me.

saroja saamaan nikalo

i run..now and then. a mile or so. my usual schedule is a long run over the weekend followed by 2 or more weeks of intense whining that my ankle / calf muscle / stomach / (insert muscle name here) has been sprained / inflamed / ooh..aah..ouched. but i've come to enjoy it so much that i go out and try it again as soon as i feel better. the person mainly responsible for this is my runner roomie and now he has started blogging on his runs and more here:

http://stridewrite.wordpress.com

written in a conversational style, it is quite informative (unlike this one) and is updated whenever he runs..which is like every day or so. (you can say that about my blog as well. the update frequency that is). so mosey over and give it a shot.

oh and the title - in my opinion, the best running song. it is always the last in my playlist so i gain an additional boost for the last 4 minutes 15 seconds of my 5 minute runs.

the fruits of labor (day)

3 day weekends rock..4 day work weeks are better

naan avan illai , the new version, is a horrible way to waste time. the lead is played by jeeva who is a con artist who tricks women, marries them and escapes with their jewels. my take - his insipid dialog delivery wouldn't have fooled any crow into dropping its vadai, let alone tricking 5 women. the story unravels through court scenes in which, lest you forget, they make him repeat the film's name about 276 times. finally the judge decides to let him go and some random woman kills him. the director tries hard to con everyone into thinking it was a good movie by (literally) filling the screen with distracting visuals of namitha. i heard quite a few fell for it and managed to make this a hit. if you are going to watch it, go directly to the last 3rd of the movie and save yourself some time.

urchagam [raaga.com] sees ranjith barot back after a long time. none of the numbers reach the heights of minnal oru kodi from VIP but they are all pretty good. i liked veyil and naram pookal. the other soundtrack that's been getting some play time is kannamoochi yenada [musicindiaonline.com] by yuvan. typical yuvan sans the rap piece and a complete koothu piece. of 5 songs, sanjaram is a nice number. isnt there something similar to proofreading for lyrics? in sanjaram madhushree makes pani (snow) sound like paani(thats hindi for water in case you scored 68 in your 10th board hindi exam) and thangi(stay) sound like thaangi(support/bear). my guess is that it was caused due to the transliteration into english. does anyone know how that process works - getting north indian singers to sing in tamil that is? do they get the lyrics in english or hindi or do they just make them up as they go?

finally i read next by michael crichton. its rather similar to state of fear. this time he takes up genomics. through a thin storyline, various technical papers and articles he tries to teach us about the science and ethics of genetic science. as a story its not that gripping but he does discuss some rather pertinent points about gene therapy, cloning and the likes. while it reads like one long opinion piece, its still quite absorbing. the fact that it is very relevant at this point in time is obvious. just this morning bbc had this article.

i think i said finally by mistake..there is still ooh la la la that i've started watching thanks to current. if u havent heard of it, it is a pretty decent band search tv program that is being telecast on sun tv. they are streaming it for free and legally at oohlalala.in (click on the Videos section). some of the original compositions were awesome and so were some of the remixes. take a look if you have the time.

that's it..i'm done..u can go back to work or whatever else u were upto. thanks for listening

a word of action

ever noticed how superheroes have adjectives and adverbs built into their names. like the costume they wear, it makes them different from their alter egos. making them appear more powerful while at the same time describing what they can do so there is no way you are caught unawares. when spiderman swings down to rescue you, you can be rest assured the ride is going to be kind of sticky and will involve some swinging.

now swing the cameras southside..i mean south of india side. captain. one word that encompasses all the adjectives,adverbs, nouns, pronouns and prepositions in any language, mainly tamil. its mostly a verb though cause when said aloud each syllable screams action. and no silly costume for captain. the occasional colored contact lenses and a police uniform maybe but he doesn't need a cape. there are no masks or trickery involved either. he is just captain. did you notice there is no indication of what his powers are? that's cause he can do everything. one would need the entire dictionary to describe his special powers.

with so much going for him, there is still no comic book...when amateurs like peter parker naturalize themselves as pavitr prabhakar, why this discrimination? someone start a publishing company and start one for him already.i guarantee it will be a collectible even before the first page is printed.

p.s
for those unfortunate enough to have never known the captain click here [youtube.com]

past posts on this topic: Accentually Speaking

vegetables, water, air, the music of sivi

remember what i said about familiarity and instantly likeable songs a couple of posts ago. forget it. if possible delete that post from your feed. i just changed my mind. fresh music is awesome in a way that that tripe from harris can never hope to beat. listen to sivi. dharan is a relative newcomer who has just one other movie to his credit - the bhagyaraj directed parijatham whose music was apparently a hit though i totally skipped it. so i am going back to take a listen. if you are sort of jobless, click here to listen to the songs from sivi. time well spent.

oh and the two of you who read this through a feed, here is a link you might not've seen:
www.workanhour.com
do your bit and earn free karma points. this offer wont last forever.
(karma points are not redeemable for airline tickets, magazine subscriptions, electronics or cash.)

just another day

waiting here tied down as the sun rises and the activity starts. mostly just chairs being drawn up just in front. the kids all march in, happy that in a short while it'll all be over. their clean pressed shirts wont have to suffer the entire day..just the tiny prick of a pin as paper meets cloth. important folks walk up and take the seats. a few of them stand up and take turns speaking. the kids applaud eagerly as if that will speed things up. the most important of those folks walks over. at first its just a little tug and then the climb begins. almost there. the binds seem to be tightening up. it'll be over soon.higher and higher. suddenly with a jerk the ties are released, flowers fall and the wind blows. freedom.

harris and the templates

do your senses have a tough time acclimatizing to all the new tunes? never fear cos template man is here. bheema represents yet another iteration in the neverending loop that harris jayaraj has been spinning for a while now. the songs being vaguely familiar hook into those parts of your brain that propagate the warm, fuzzy feeling that familiarity breeds and are promptly pushed to the top of your playlist. talk about reusability of code. harris has his algorithm down pat.

two of the songs - mudhal mazhai and siru paarvayalae - feature his signature meaningless lyrics. i wonder if it is to make it tough to render the songs on stage. the singers would feel silly doing that before a live audience. maybe it is to hook the kids in so they have something to repeat endlessly and irritate their parents. ranga rangamma has some drumline beats that get inducted into the library of tamil film music beats. it is somewhat of a koothu song but doesnt come close to his own kalyanamthaan from saamy. the rest of the songs are neat

if you are so inclined sit down, dissect the songs and find out where the individual bits have been inherited from. i tried for a bit and gave up. its easier to just enjoy them for now and hit up itwofs when they finally post the original source of the songs.

Listen to the tunes here

of roaring lions and foxes in the 20th century

three more movies went down this past weekend and it all probably started with a small video shop called 'video age' in the kilpauk neighborhood. my neighbor's father owned it and i remember with some clarity my many visits to the shop, with its cassettes neatly arranged in the wall and my favorites tom & jerry volumes 1 through n among them. i probably cursed my neighbor a lot for being born into a video shop, especially one that had so many tom & jerrys.

we initially had a b&w idiot box that gave way to a color one with 8 fantastic channels. 7 of those received the most beautiful static ever seen(or heard) and 1 broadcast DD and its sonorous yet hypnotic intro scene in all its faded glory when they chose to broadcast something. the sunday evening movie was the highlight of the week (i tried the 1.15 pm regional ones..but couldn't read the subtitles fast enough). there were several times we would be out on sundays and on the way back fervent prayers would be offered to the gods of buses and traffic signals to somehow take us home in time for the movie. then came the video shop and the concept that for some money you could borrow things like a VCR (or a VCP if u like) and some 5 or 6 flicks that could be watched over the weekend. it was like someone giving you all the big fun in the world for the price of 1, that you could chew and then return after the weekend. yeah it was that good a deal.

the vcr and the tv formed a two-part act which happened with great fanfare during a few summer weekends and what a show they would put on. the vcr, the star attraction, would arrive in a mini procession all decked out in its velvet-lined leather costume and windows that revealed nothing of the sights it held within. the flicks were carefully chosen to take into account everyone's tastes - a bond movie for my dad, a cartoon for me and my sis, a tam flick for my mom, a random yet somewhat famous hindi one (taken mainly because we'd seen one song on chitrahaar) and maybe one more cartoon. there would be a marathon session over the weekend as we'd hurry to get through all the rented flicks before the clock struck 12 and the tv turned back into being just a box. until the same cycle was repeated again a few weeks later

now, the library is my new video shop. every visit results in at least 2 or 3 dvds borrowed on my friend's account. if i'm too lazy to go to the hall and watch it on tv, my laptop plays them for me. weekends are still movie weekends and except for the nearly extinct VCRs and VCPs, the video age still marches on and till it does you will have to bear the posts i make about them movies. its a glorious age indeed.

the gentle notes of a shehnai playing the dd theme close out the broadcast for the day

Vertigo

Vertigo is a flick i've wanted to see for a while. there is a definite break in the film after which you can sense the mood changing. as an investigator suffering from vertigo, james stewart gets manipulated in the first part and plays the manipulator in the second. its set in san fran - the sloping streets always adding another dimension to the screen. i missed the hitchcock cameo so i guess i'm going to have to see it again and of course blog about it again.

will be taking a short break..from the short stuff that is. a full length feature which can wrap around the blog world twice when laid out end to end is on its way out..or will it be as long as 1.6 times the distance from my main blog to its one of its satellites...dont hold your breath though

disclaimer: that image..not mine. its from imdb.com. so were the others. so if anyone's copying them, dont complain if the MPAA catches up

Good Bye Lenin!

Ux - danke schoen
Good Bye Lenin! is german for "funny scripts, excellent characters and neat acting equals awesome movies". a son has to prevent his mom from knowing about communist germany's fall as she wakes up from a coma shortly after and should not hear anything exciting. he goes about recreating the east of the past and hilarity ensues. the "making of" special feature on the dvd reveals how the crew had to recreate a 90s germany in 2001 through some amazing conversations with the director and editor.

Live Free or Die Hard

the u.s govt is under siege by a cracker who hacks into their systems and who else do they turn to but john 'profanity bleeped' mcclane. had to wait a bit for the action to start. once it did, it was a gut punching, bullet ridden, mcclane screaming ride all the way. plenty of awesome punch lines and a weak hacker story that has its logic confused balance each other out. mcclane's final act reminds us once more why we enjoy this series so much.

Downsizing

so i watched more than my share of movies last week. no i wont bore you with detailed, opinionated write-ups about each one of them. instead you will get detailed, opinionated snippets that are pocket-sized for your convenience. like snacks before mealtime you wont even realize they are gone till you see that your feed is empty. however unlike those snacks, these are actually good for you in a not-so-verbose kind of way. enough said already..here comes the first of those

Transformers

p.s. spoiler alert...i have no idea if i have revealed important parts of the "story". read at your own risk ..and this post is almost as long as the transformers movie

what if robots could do everything that humans could? think independently, feel emotions, act, ham? yes ham. when bots start hamming you know that you've wasted a hard earned $5.75 on matinee tickets to transformers. my childhood robotic hero was the one and only giant robot. transformers cartoons werent shown on DD and i didnt get caught up in the mecha revolution till i started watching anime. just want to make it clear that i am not a transformers fanboy. go on.

what could one do wrong when you are given robots to play with? what if they were awesome bots that can go from mundane vehicle to mechanized warriors in a blink? well you get involved in them so much that you can forget to build a coherent plot. the first half of michael bay's toy story is a mishmash of scenes that cut from an attacked qatar US army base to the power corridors of DC to teenage suburbia really quickly. each scene barely lasts a few minutes. through these rapid cuts we come to know that
a. your car may be a bot. if its yellow and has racing stripes try talking to it
b. U.S. intelligence uses australian signal processing experts who know the top U.S hackers more than the U.S intelligence and together they all agree that something alien is attacking them
c. the U.S has secret agencies that the secretary of defense does not know about..really? No...are you serious?

the yellow car bot has some other vehicle buddies who all descend to earth in time to explain why a certain cube is so important that it has to be renamed and shrunk to a smaller size. their vehicular foes meanwhile are plotting to awaken their boss, get the cube and use its awesome power to make bots out of your toaster and microwave. Their goal - to conquer the universe. using your oven and fridge. hence proving that artificial intelligence has some ways to go.

despite my general griping, the transformation effects are awesome. i liked the mostly gray, black and silver decepticons (the bad robots) more than the autobots (the good ones) who looked like clowns stepping out of a carnival in their yellows, reds and blues. the action scenes between them are well choreographed. however perspective is something that the cgi people chose to ignore and in an effort to thrust the action on you, show two grappling hunks of machine parts so close up that you dont know whose exhaust pipe is on whose tire.

the finale takes you from hoover dam to the streets of LA where the bots pull out all the stops and transform, protect and destroy in a metal orgy (metallurgy. get it? :) ). shia labeouf runs around with the unwieldy cube which i thought could've been shrunken some more to fit in one of his pockets and megan fox who plays his girlfriend utters stellar lines like "i'll drive, you shoot". however the star of the show is a near-maudlin optimus prime ( one of the autobots) who instead of kicking the decepticons' ass offers to give his life for the human race. give him/her/it a lifetime achievement oscar and retire her/it/him. left to continue its act, its going to star in the sequel and i dont want to spend another $5.75 on a 2 hour commercial for toys and detroit cars.