From IMBD: Yukihiko Tsutsumi ( Memories of Tomorrow, Black Jack) and Ryuhei Kitamura ( Versus, Azumi ) each finished their contributions to the short film anthology Jam Films (2002) in record time. As a result producer Shinya Kawai gave the two directors a proposal to each create a feature length movie with only two actors, battling in one setting and filmed entirely in one week. The undertaking was called the Duel Project. As a result, Kitamura created Aragami, a story about a samurai warrior battling and Tsutsumi 2LDK.

I chanced upon this piece of information last week, and circuits fried in my brain at the thought of a Kitamura flick that's one long fight sequence. (Oh wait, wasn't Versus a single extended fight? Whatever!) I didn't have Aragami, but 2LDK had been part of a bunch of movies that a friend had given me early this year, so I watched it Saturday.

The term "2LDK" refers to the Japanese version of what we Indians call 2BHK - an apartment with two bedrooms, a hall and a kitchen. The movie, true to the conditions set on the filmmaker, takes place in a flat over a single night.The occupants are two aspiring actresses, and both have auditioned for the starring role in a production - the kind of make-or-break role that might launch one's career and rejuvenate the other's - and are waiting for a confirmation phonecall from their agency. A conflict had been brewing for quite sometime; when the movie begins, we see the different temperaments and motivations of the women - one meticulously writes her initials on eggs before storing them in the refrigerator, the other flies off the handle at the visible drop in the level of her bottle of Chanel No 5. And then we find out that it's not really a good idea to stay in a flat that has katanas and sais hanging on display.

In a film like this, it's difficult to create backstory without the characters breaking into lengthy exposition. Tsutsumi does not fall into this trap, however - he uses voice-overs to convey the characters' thoughts, making for some interesting dialogue overlaps when the women say the opposite of what they are thinking. Cellphone conversations and text messages make for part of the storytelling, the camera lingers on the flatmate's actions, telling the viewer volumes about the inner workings of their mind. All of this makes for some very rounded characterisation, allowing us to sympathise with both the women in turn, and make our own judgements about their flaws. And then the violence begins, and things just keep getting better. The ending was a little too predictable, but hey, I can live with that!

And now that I have Aragami - I know I just said I didn't have that movie, but that was on Saturday, dude - I am going to watch it tonight, hoo ah!

Why on earth did Disney have to make a movie called Sky High? It screws up my search results for Kitamura's movie, the one about the afterlife and serial killers. Faugh!

Sha Po Lang was another film I saw Saturday. Stars Donnie Yen, Simon Yam ( the guy from Election ), and Sammo Hung. Perfect mix of cop drama and martial arts, and brilliant pacing.

Cliched as it may sound, Om Shanti Om redefines the term "masala film" for our generation. Ok, so it's a love story. It's a reincarnation theme. It's also a spoof of Bollywood in the seventies and of the present-day star-son/guest-appearance syndrome. At parts, it becomes a horror movie, or at least tries to. It makes over-acting an integral part of the script. Yes, and lest you say "there was no script", I beg to disagree. Loved every minute of it, and bunked office on Tuesday to go check out the IMAX version. Current count: 3.

The film is a complete exercise in over-the-top chutzpah - the icing on the cake would have been if FK had gotten Karan Johar to speak to the camera during the award ceremony, and say - "Om Kapoor and I are just friends." The self-inflated star cameos were BRILLIANT - it was almost like the actors took the personalities one would associate with them and turned them all the way up to 11. Part of this unabashed attitude is reflected in the song lyrics - I hardly ever notice words to songs unless they are Gulzar's lines tuned by Vishal Bharadwaj - but rhyming "pichhle mahiney ki chhabbisko" with "dil mein mere hai dard-e-disco" is hardcore, man. Respect, Javed Akhtar. And the composer duo Vishal-Shekhar, in particular Vishal Dadlani manages to floor me everytime - he's the lead singer of Pentagram the band, who blew me away the day I heard him sing Bjork's 'Army of Me' on stage. He is at home composing a cheesy Bollywood number like 'Dil Dooba' ( Khakee), goes on to sing the catchy 'Kiss of Love' in Jhoom Baraabar Jhoom and now, apart from composing the songs in OSO, writes the lyrics to 'Ajab Si' - man, the line "dil ko banaade jo patang, saansey teri woh hawaaye hai" just kills me. Also, the man makes a guest appearance as the microphone-twirling director of Mohabbat-man, bwahahahaha.

And the references. Right from the seventies billboards of Schweppes and Exide batteries - to the small details (a poster of 'Baali Umar Ko Salaam' hangs on the wall, the debut film of our heroince Shantipriya, referenced in a throwaway line somewhere in the first half). Manoj Kumar's driving license, Subhash Ghai getting into the directorial groove, Mohabbat-man, the making of Apahij Pyaar, Tiger fights - I could go on, you know that? This kind of self-referential, in-joke-laden storytelling gets to you most of the times, but not in Om Shanti Om. This is the kind of film that begs you to grab a bucket of popcorn, sink into a chair and laugh along with it. And then when the film is over, you need to go back and figure out how many of the jokes you missed the first time around. Inspired lunacy does that to you.



I also saw Mahesh Bhatt's Dhokha this week. Nice plot, about a Muslim police officer whose life falls apart when he learns his wife is a suicide bomber. In true-blue Vishesh Films' fashion, the overblown script-writing and the non-existent acting proceeds to drive the plot towards a predictable conclusion. Pathetic execution.

And I bought the newly-released two-disc edition of Chak De India on Friday, and then watched the film a couple of times on Sunday. The deleted scenes, in this case, are scenes which have been editted out from the final cut, with a lot of subplots and incidents missing. One of the hockey girls, in particular, gets the short end of the stick, with her story being a prominent subplot that gets excised. And my DVD player refused to go beyond the interval, which I think was because of the layer transition in the DVD. I had to finish it on my PC instead.

Other things of note: Downloaded Samurai Wolf and Samurai Wolf 2. And am FINALLY getting the Female Prisoner Scorpion boxed set, woo hoo!!

And also, for the first time ever, ALL my books are back with me, from various parts of the world.

Coming soon, "Mammoth Book" anthologies of Crime comics, horror comics, and new manga.

I was reading the Kaiju Shakedown blog right now, Grady Hendrix's neat blog on Asian movies ( which I found thanks to adgy's recommendation), and I found news about the US release of Yoji Yamada's Love and Honor.

The first Yoji Yamada movie I saw was Twilight Samurai, and it's brilliant, kind of an antithesis to the swordplay-heavy, heroic-samurai flicks that one is normally familiar with. It's more of a look at the Japanese society, which had its own caste system during the late Edo period, primarily divided into the high-born, arrogant Samurai class and the lower, poverty-ridden peasants . Tasogare Seibei, the "twilight samurai" in the film deals with his everyday life as a grain-store clerk in the employ of the clan-head, deflecting sarcasm from his fellow samurai because of his poverty and his lack of interest in socializing. The only link he has to his status is the katana he owns and the *knowledge* of the fact that he is a samurai. He has to bear the responsibility of rearing two children provide medicine for his senile mother, a herculean task considering his 50-koku salary. The re-appearance of his childhood friend Tomoe who's been recently divorced from her abusive but rich husband foresees a change in his life, but Seibei's sense of honour and responsibility is put to the test by the series of events that follow.

After finishing Twilight Samurai, I tried very hard to find out more of Yoji Yamada's movies. Apparently Twlight Samurai is the first of a thematic trilogy dealing with Samurai life, the second being The Hidden Blade and the third Love and Honor. Saw the latter in my flight to San Francisco from Singapore. Haven't found The Hidden Blade yet. According to the Kaiju Shakedown blog, Love and Honor is being released in only ONE THEATER in the US, the ImaginAsian in NY City. Sasi, I think you will miss it, but if you are still coming to India, you can borrow the DVD from me. Please, please watch it. It's a fantastic piece of work and is more of a love story set in a samurai setting. And while you're at it, add the Kaiju Shakedown blog to your feeds.

Another thing that came to mind today was a snippet of an interview I caught with Govinda, just before Partner was being released sometime in the middle of this year. We were playing the Maahi-Sona- game on TV - you switch channels and place bets on which channel you will come across a Yash Chopra-Karan Johan blockbuster song, eight times out of ten, it would turn out to be the Zoom channel that would be playing Where's the Party tonight or Rock and Roll Soniye or That's the way Maahi ve at any given point of time in the day. But this one time, there was an interview going on. Salman Khan was interviewing Govinda, both of them being co-stars in the then-to-be-released Partner, and there was much back-slapping and bonhomie being radiated from the screen. Apparently the two actors got along famously, and the interview was more of a conversation and an mutual ass-kissing experience at the same time.

And then it started getting interesting.

Salman Khan asked Govinda, "Ok, tell me, who's your favourite Khan in the industry?" No prizes for guessing who he thought the answer would be.

Govinda: "My favourite Khan would have to be Yusuf Khan."

"Yusuf Khan? You mean Dilip Kumar?"

"Yes, the greatest actor this industry has ever known. The best actor I've seen on screen."

"Ok, who's your second-most favourite Khan?"

"That would be Mehboob Khan, Mother India is  a landmark film in Indian history, and his contribution to films cannot be ignored by any director."

"Right. Your third favourite Khan?"

"Kader Khan, without whom ninety percent of the films of the eighties wouldn't have such magnificent dialogues. And I cannot even start counting how many actors owe their career to Kader Khan's dialogues, including myself."

At this point, I was feeling very warm and fuzzy. I could hug Govinda, regardless of whether he had deliberately made up the answers on the spot just to show his knowledge of film history or something. Hmmm, why did I remember this today, of all days? And why am I writing about it? Hmmm.

Been a long while since I did one of these.

• Udatta-da landed up in Hyderabad on Thursday and stayed over at my place Friday night, chilling out ( I think! ) to pseudo-Assamese food, BT's This Binary Universe and Craig Thompson's Blankets. Try and make it here a little more frequently, U.



• Watched Sekhar Kammula's Godavari on Sunday afternoon. I did not enjoy Anand, his earlier film all that much. It was pretty tackily editted ( Kammula himself admits that) and the storyline did not feel complete in some way. Godavari on the other hand is much more well-developed in terms of production values and scriptwriting. The cribs - a slightly zonked-out narrative towards the end, where the director ( who's also the writer, btw ) while trying to have a proper ending to the story, introduces a lot of subplots and does not end up resolving them properly.



• I also watched Mahesh Babu's Atithi in the middle of the week. What a mess of a movie! It's almost as if somebody made a parody of a Mahesh Babu film starring Mahesh Babu. Methinks the guy needs to rethink his image-oriented approach to his films, which even the director admits was part of his approach to making Atithi.



• Played the first two chapters of this old, old, OLD game called The Longest Journey. Now while I suck at adventure games, I was eager to play this one because I had played the demo when in college. Repeated attempts to find this had resulted in failure, until The Serious One passed me a copy of his original box-set ( apparently, he had picked it up at a Rediff.com sale, of all places). Now the aforementioned copy had steadfastly refused to play when I did a full install, but this weekend, I tried a partial install and whaddyaknow, it worked! Really enjoyable game, this, and is more like reading a fantasy novel than playing a game. The only grouse I have ( and this is against all adventure games, in general) is, why the eff can't I solve the puzzles? Gah!



• Also finished the first volume of Spirou yesterday. Very very entertaining stuff. There are four stories in all in the first volume, each with a different bent. Starts off with 'The Robot Blueprint', which is standard fare, with Spirou and Fantasio pursuing and being pursued by a bunch of crooks who are after a blueprint of a deadly weapon developed by Professor Samovar. Some hilarious Herge-ian moments ensue in course of a car chase, where Spirou's car runs into a bullock cart carrying a bale of hay. Just when I thought that the other stories would also be about capers and foil-a-wicked-plan-type story, there's Spirou in the ring, where our intrepid hero has to tackle a boxing challenge from Big Bert, the neighbourhood bully. ( I found out that the names of the supporting characters have been changed in the translation. Poildur is the name of the bully in the French version.) 'Spirou Rides a Horse' is a short, howlarious story of, well, Spirou riding a spirited horse, one that takes lessons in jumping from a frog. The last of the lot 'Spirou meets the Pygmies' is much longer tale, that starts with a stray leopard taking up lodgings with our hero, which leads to a trip to the island of Rungapunga, a place where two pygmy tribes have a war going on. The resolution to this particular war is something that's completely bowled me over! can't wait to start on the Count of Cul-de-Sac, the next volume in the series.



• A friend offered to sell me his copies of Jordi Bernet's Torpedo reprints at cost price. Considering that Catalan Communications, the company that reprinted part of the Torpedo series is now bankrupt, with the books long out of print, this offer makes me want to do a war-dance. Woo hoo!



• Once can hardly thank Moser-Baer enough for coming up with The Complete Mind Your Language and selling DVDs for 99 Rs each. Am glad I didn't put in too much effort into buying MYL after the first set I got off National Market refused to work...
  

I saw True Romance last night, the Uncut Director's Cut. I have to admit that except for the Quentin Tarantino association, I knew virtually nothing about the movie. Was taken aback by the Sonny Chiba references. Too many monologues abound - but hey, what's a Tarantino-scripted movie without monologues? Dennis Hopper waxes forth on Sicilians, Christopher Walken makes a chilling guest appearance, Christian Slater talks about Oscar movies, Sonny Chiba, Elvis Presley, James Gandolfini gets poetic about killing, and Tom Sizemore and Chris Penn get into detail about the how prison life contributes to a happy marriage. Probably the best Doctor Zhivago reference in any movie I've seen. What also struck me was the uncanny resemblence to some of the plot points in Preacher ( the comic book) - the "Mentor" appearances in the restrooms ( Val Kilmer played that? Wow! ), the way the characters Alabama Worley and Tulip O'Hare have this inherent ass-kicking ability inside themselves that manifests in odd, scary ways.



My DVD ( bought for 20 Rs in Kathmandu ) appears to have three commentary tracks, the deleted scenes and the alternate ending. Heard the first fifteen minutes of the Tarantino commentary today morning - yum!

Awesome music find of the week: Balligomingo. Luscious female vocals over soaring, lush electronic soundscapes.

Mickey Spillane died. Damn. I used to love the guy's work, ever since Max Allan Collins mentioned him in the letters pages of an issue of Batman and I happened to chance upon I, The Jury - incidentally the man's first novel - in one of Guwahati's second-hand bookshops. True to the way my life has always been, I couldn't find any other Mickey Spillane novel anywhere until after graduation. A Sunday trip to Abids gave me 20 Mickey Spillane novels, which were being sold at the very competitive price of 10 Rs each. Some collector must have sold off his entire Spillane set at a go, because there is no human way for me to explain that haul. Went on a Spillane binge for about a month, finished 17 books one after the other, and I remember quite vividly that in my thoughts, I constructed Mike Hammer-ish sentences. Probably the only other character I can compare to Mike would be Andrew Vachss's Burke.

Did you know that there was a Mike Hammer comic strip in the 1950's? Ironic, considering that Spillane had originally concieved of Mike Hammer as a comicbook character named Mike Danger and was turned down by quite a few companies. After the success of the novels, the comicbookization was easier.

Spillane managed to do something no other writer has ever done - he played his the role of Mike Hammer in a 1963 movie. ( No, Stephen King as Jordy Verrill does not count) This bit of information, unfortunately, came to me after a rather gripping prelim round in the A/V quiz of an instalment of IIT Madras's cul-fest Saarang. We missed out qualification by half points, bah. There was also a comic called Mickey Spillane's Mike Danger published by Tekno comics ( the short-lived company that did the excellent - ah, well, in my opinion anyways - Mr Hero The Newmatic Man.) written by Max Allan Collins and featuring Mike Danger in the future. Haven't read it, though I have seen house ads in the pages of Mr Hero.



I saw this excellent Telugu movie this weekend. Anukokunda Oka Roju, which translates to Suddenly...One Day. Rather neat concept, and nearly flawless execution. A friend brought it up first to me, during a long walk. The premise was this - this girl, at the insistence of a close friend, goes to a party during a weekend. Someone drugs her drink, to the strains of Sunidhi Chauhan and Dominique's I Wanna Sing ( I will talk about the music, hold on a bit), and the next morning she wakes up in her bed and finds out that she's late for her college. Only, when she gets to classes, she finds out that there's no one around, and the lone clerk on duty asks her why she's come there on a Sunday. Yes. There's a day missing from her life, and she cannot remember anything about what happened to her between the night of the party and the time she woke up in her bed.

Which is rather bad, because there are random people trying to kill her. A guy accosting her for money she owes him. A scary recording that gives an ominous portent of what might have transpired that night. And a couple of disturbing dreams.

Throw in a juice-swigging police officer who has a crush on the lady, a confused taxi driver, a gentle giant with a penchant for theatre of the mythological variety, a rather cryptic old man who stays in the same apartment complex as the lady, and a series of odd incidents that are more connected than you could ever imagine. To that, add a hilarious bunch of dialogues that are subtitled really well ( now that's an issue I have with watching Tamil DVDs, the subtitles suck. This one had pretty good subs in comparison), MM Kreem's peppy music, and completely down-to-earth performances by everyone concerned. You have a movie that makes me want to go and buy everything Chandrashekhar Yeleti has ever made and watch them back to back. The guy shot into prominence with his first film Aithe, which Sasi raved about for quite some time. Erm, actually, I've already gone and bought Aithe - the original DVD is available for a measly 99 Rs. I am eager to see it, but I doubt if I can, before the weekend. Ah well.

A note about the music. There are not too many songs, this is a thriller after all, but all of them are potential earworms. In particular, 'Righto Lefto' by Shreya Ghoshal - the combination of the melody and Charmy's expressions in the film are just TOO much. The party song 'I wanna sing' is like a stripped-down item number, if that makes sense to you. Excellent.

Stop smirking, vrikodhara.



I had a couple of book coupons for Walden, and redeemed them for a book called Helen: The Life and Times of an H-Bomb by Jerry Pinto. No, this is not a modern retelling of the Illiad or anything - it's about our favourite dancing lady of the fifties, sixties and the seventies, and it's somewhat disappointing because the writer could not really involve the lady herself in his enterprise. I am halfway into the book, and there are no remarkable insights into Helen's career other than the ones we already know courtesy stray Filmfare articles. What the book managed to do was to get me to listen to old cabaret numbers early in the morning, ensuring that I spend quite some time at the keyboard plonking away 'Mera Naam Chin Chin Choo".

And I finally got my hands on the Omkara CD last night, heard the first song, and I decided I needed some quality time to listen to the album. Fun awaits, yeehah.



And an OS crash ensured a reformat of the primary drive, followed by a Windows reinstallation. Stuff lost: saved game files, stray images, all installed programs, and, worst of all, the FL Studio files from last year, some of which I was rather proud of. Ouch.

otherwise known as Bunty Aur Babli.

Caught a show on Sunday morning with Mons. Enjoyed every moment, really. The film walks the line between fun and outright goofy. There has been this continuous comparison with Catch Me If You Can and Bonnie and Clyde - very unwarranted, because Bunty Aur Babli is not about the mechanics of conning people or violent gunplay, it's about, duh, Bunty AND Babli, two small-town crooks people who get a kick out of working together and have fun all the way. The dialogues are awesome, and I will say that Abhishek Bachhan and Rani Mukherjee fill out their roles with just the right amount of tongue-in-cheek. The movie is chockful of references to Hindi movies, from Sholay (Bunty and Babli recreate the famous motorcycle scene) to Devdas (think candles and Aishwarya Rai )

Guest appearances by Prem Chopra, Ranjeet, Ravi Vasvani, Kiran Juneja, Puneet Issar ( trivia: What's the significance of the last film in which Puneet Issar and Amitabh Bachhan acted together?), Rajesh Vivek and Raj Babbar.

Truth be told, I did NOT go to see it for the music, but it was just a coincidence that the songs "Dhadak Dhadak" and "Kajra Rey" were stuck in my head all of last week. Loved the way the percussion in the chorus of "Dhadak Dhadak" was synchronised to the sound of a train. "Kajra Rey" was wasted, in a way. The song is a funk-qawwali, the kind of energetic stuff that had Rishi Kapoor tearing curtains onstage and ladies clapping to the beat of glittering lightbulbs on their blouses way back in the seventies. This being the post-nineties, any song that has item-number potential has to happen in a bar with the same generic wiggling of assorted body-parts. The song had potential, man, and they screwed it up onscreen.

And yeah, as Mons pointed out, the choreography of Chupke Se had a Mani Ratnam influence lingering throughout, influenced by the collage of the songs in Dil Se.

Thankfully, the Blaaze song did not turn up anywhere, even in the end credits. Amitabh Bachhan lip-syncing to Blaaze? *Shudder*

Movies watched so far this year: 112.

Not counting repeat viewings of new movies and re-viewing of old ones, complete or incomplete.

The First Movie watched this year: The Polar Express, on IMAX 3D.
The Last Movie watched before this post: Man Bites Dog.
Movies Watched Most Number of Times This Year:

• Sin City (7)


• Kill Bill Vol 1(5)


• Kung Fu Hustle, House of Flying Daggers(4)


• Honorary Mentions: Noises Off (3), Ghost In The Shell(3).

Total number of days in this year so far: 146.

Not bad, eh?

Woo Hoo! Everybody loves Sin City.

Can't wait. Though it's going to be some time before it releases in India. I am still undecided about whether to go the Kill Bill way and shed picture quality in favour of an early peek ( courtesy The Market ), or wait for the theatrical release in India. Probably it will be the former, because I can't imagine it being screened uncut. Humph.

For non-comic-book readers who have no clue about what on earth Sin City is, here's the primer.

Prices of the Sin City comics, the original 32-page floppies that were released between 1991 and '98, have soared on eBay. I remember seeing complete lots of the Sin City comics going for 80$ a year ago ( I bought the individual issues at below cover-price, my first 2fargon-assisted eBay purchases. Did I tell you about the Frank Miller-autographed issue of Sin City: To Hell And Back #1he got for me? ). Last I looked, complete lots are selling at about 300$. Man.

Oh, and porcorosso, I finally watched Porco Rosso last night. I have a vague feeling that the Great Ghibli Gig has just begun.

Before I go to sleep in the middle of the night, I put on the computer, and enqueue all the music files on the hard disk (the playlist time comes to about 312 days) on Winamp, put it on low volume. It's an awesome feeling waking up in the middle of the night ( for a glass of water, or to pee, or just like that) and listening to the song that's playing at the moment and trying to figure out who it is by. I put Winamp in shuffle mode, so when I go back to sleep - it's fun guessing what the next song would be.

It might sound funny, but I can't sleep with the sound of running water, or a clock ticking louder than normal - but heavy metal playing loud is no problem at all.

Possibly, very possibly, the most romantic movies I have seen, this one and its sequel.

Anil told me about it first, when I was in IIM Calcutta, sitting bleary-eyed in his room and burning truckloads of divX movies. "Very good movie", he said, "Came out quite sometime back, not really a big hit or anything, but I liked it." "What's it about?", I remember asking, and when he said it's a romantic movie, I almost did not copy it to disc. But I did. And promptly forgot all about it until last November, when Prashant and I, walking down MG Road to the nearest Citibank ATM. ( Later, we found out that there was one right on Brigade road, and we needn't have walked all the way, but I guess if we hadn't, this conversation wouldn't have occurred, and I wouldn't have been writing this line.) We were talking movies, and from a long critique of Baise Moi, which appeared as a half-brained copy of Thelma and Louise, to talking about Susan Sarandon films and then to women-oriented ones, Uma Thurman and Kill Bill included, he suddenly asked me whether I had seen this movie. I had not, of course, and so for the next half an hour, I was given a from-the-heart lecture on it. Damn, all of a sudden I wished I had my divX movies here with me.

kvk mentioned it a couple of days later, and also mentioned that the sequel had just come out. What was this - the world seems to have seen this film before me, and everybody loved it! Something had to be done, and the next time I was in National Market, I asked them if this was around. I was shown a trashy Pierce Brosnan flick that had a similar name. Bleh. A couple of days later, Prashant found the sequel while rummaging around for Tarantino movies. "Give it a miss, it's sure to be a camera-print version", I suggested. He didn't listen to me, thank the Lord.

So the other day, I was hanging around all alone in the house, a little too tired to watch a high-octane action movie, and a little too downbeat for a comedy. Let me watch something I generally wouldn't watch, I thought. The only romantic movie around was the sequel, and ok, I watched it. Finished it. Watched the Making of-documentary ( it wasn't a camera print, after all) Watched the film again, wishing all the while I was in Hyderabad.

I found the first movie at National Market a couple of days later, but it was part of a combination, and I didn't really want to buy it that way. So I waited. Yesterday, Sasi went a little berserk at all the Bergman/Truffaut movies he saw there - and he ended up buying the combo-DVD as well. And so, as Mark Knopfler was playing at Palace Grounds, 2 kilometers away from where I live, I watched The Movie. Possibly, very possibly, the most romantic movies I have seen, this one and its sequel. Oh, did I just repeat myself?

Some of the conversations in the first movie sound contrived, I agree. It appears too easy, too spontaneous. But it's beautiful. The second film is not perfect, but the way it takes the theme of urgency even further - it's shot almost in real-time, and yes, the soundtrack *sigh*. The dialogues are a wee bit more realistic, maybe because the two lead stars chipped in with their own lines? Some of the lines make so much sense now after the first movie. The ending? There could have been no other.

Just for the record, I plan to watch both the movies again. Back to back. And with the right person.

( The song I am listening to now... )

As it turns out, I have been mispelling a writer's name. Inspite of having read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, it took me a google search to figure out that Susanna Clarke's first name is *not* spelt "Susannah". Damn. Which means that the teeny little disclaimer about perfect spelling on my user-info does not hold good any longer. I swear - if I had a knife nearby, and if I wasn't so chicken-hearted, I would be slicing off my little finger in disgrace.

Couple of happy things:

• I bought myself a complete set of the six Akira graphic novels on eBay. And a set of Daredevil, issues 26-69, the delectable Brian Bendis/Alex Maleev run from the same seller.


• Discovered the joys of Berke Breathed's lovely comic series Bloom County. Got some of the collected volumes off a sale for 50 rupees each. It was the sight of the dog pushing the wheelchair of a Vietnam vet, both quoting Star Trek, that brought me to this conclusion. Highly recommended.


• My Andrew Vachss collection is now technically complete. I have all the books until Pain Management (2001), which is fifteen books in all. I haven't seen the newer novels in stores anywhere in India.


• Picked up a first-edition copy of Gods, Demons and Others by RK Narayan (with the dust jacket intact) for 100 Rs. This was one of the first books I bought with my own money, sometime in December 1988, and I don't really remember where the copy is, right now. But getting this version made me real happy. I loved the delightful tone of voice in which RK Narayan narrated these stories, when I read this book the first time - inspite of knowing most of them by heart ( courtesy Amar Chitra Katha.
  

The more Takeshi Kitano movies I watch, the more convinced I am that the guy is the Japanese equivalent of Shah Rukh Khan, playing different facets of himself in all his movies. But then, the joy of watching a Kitano movie lies in observing the cliches that he has mastered - the silent, brooding protagonist, the in-your-face violence that launches itself in extremely creative ways, Joe Hisaishi's scores, the wisecracking foil played by Susumu Terajima, and the self-destructive ending. It's not a problem being repetitive ( after all, most classic rockers made a fortune out of repetitiveness), it's a problem when the repetitiveness becomes in-your-face, loud, and crass. None of these are attributes I would associate with a Kitano movie. Fireworks was a picture-perfect film. Every other minute of the movie, I would want to pause the player and just observe the frame, each moment a cinematographic masterpiece. After a very, very long time, I have this urge to paint (which is not necessarily a good thing, I know), because of this movie.

Whoa whoa whoa, what do we have here? Francois Ozon's Swimming Pool is all set to be released in Delhi sometime in March, and Bangalore/Chennai in April. Not bad at all, though this will be the good-bits version, or maybe the good-bits-are-hidden-but-you-can-try-make-sense-out-of-what-we-show-you-version as decreed by our hallowed Censor Board.

I live in a country where you get live albums by Isaac Hayes at book sales for 60 Rupees a CD. I don't know whether to be glad or pissed. ( Pissed because had I been a little late, someone else would have bought that CD. Damn)

Did anyone notice the market for old comics in India? A fine example - Blossom Book House is selling copies of Indrajal comics from the seventies and eighties for 20-25 Rs each. Issues that have a cover price of 1-2 rs, and which are missing covers are being put up with these kind of prices, and surprisingly, people are buying them at those prices. Everytime I go there, the issues I saw the last time are gone, and more copies have come in, with similar prices. Makes me glad I filched all those old Indrajal comics off assorted cousins and uncles a decade ago.

The more I look at Paris Hilton, the more I am reminded of Kareena Kapoor. Not a good thing.

Kisna: The Warrior Poet, is rife with subtleties. You know, the Subhash-Ghai kind of subtleties, like showing a black horse and a white horse gambolling around together. That's supposed to symbolise love - brown guy (Vivek Oberoi) and white girl (Antonia Bernaud). And when the movie begins with this sort of subtle imagery, you do not let that faze you. You sit down calmly, and think of myriad ways to painfully assassinate the director, the cast, the scriptwriter - basically everybody involved with this film. (Except Antonia Bernaud, perhaps. Poor girl must have hardly realised what she was getting into.)

Isha Sharvani, that lady you've seen twirling around a rope and doing those eyepopping leg-splits on those trailers? Guess what, that's all she does throughout the movie, so you better get used to your eyes popping out for 2 hours and 35 minutes. You would love to have this kind of girl around the house - she gets happy, she twirls on ropes; she is dejected, she twirls on ropes; she's angry, she twirls on ropes some more. And when she finds her homegrown loverboy in the arms of a firanghee and is spurned by him in the name of karma and dharma and karma-dharma and dharma-karma and all those B-movies of the eighties? She twirls on ropes atop a burning tree . Get it? Get it? Burning tree. Symbolism.

The events unfold in this quaint little village called Dharmaprayag, which is where the rivers Alakananda and Bhagirathi meet. ( How do I remember this bit of information? There's an Odyssey quiz coming soon, buddy, and you never know where these quizmasters get their questions from.) So, the first half of the movie, Dharmaprayag's where all the action is. You have a distinguished English lady coming to this village, where everybody behaves like B-actors trying hard to come to terms with acting in an A-movie, and getting regaled by Banjaran dancers from Rajasthan, and being snubbed by some yo-dude-checkisout-type reporters about her ignorance of India and Indianness. Surprise, surprise, the lady turns out to be fluent in Hindi, and also turns out she has a story to tell. That, of course, is the story of Kisna, which was supposed to have happened in 1947. Why did the lady delay her return to India and her meeting Kisna again? Because she watched Titanic just last year, and if Gloria Stuart can do it, so can she.

I would love to say some more about Ghai-saab's refined tastes, like shooting a song against a blue sky with dancers wearing blue inside a blue-crystal cave-ish kotha. ( Blue. Kisna. Blue. Get it? ) And amidst all this bluescreen shooting, the poor man forgot that to have an item number, ( Ssshhh. Never mind the fact that this is 1947 and item numbers didn't exist then. Dude, you had item numbers in 53 BC, when Emperor Ashahrukha was around.) you need an item. Not Sushmita Sen. I don't remember seeing any part of her body moving, other than her eyes. Yes, she was that bad.

Then there is a scene which is Subhash Ghai's tribute to Raj Kapoor. You have the river Ganga flowing by, and you have two lovers, and you have Raj Kapoor to pay homage to, so what do you do? Kick yourselves if you didn't get this. You have the babe call herself Gangotri, dress up in flimsy white clothes, and then go have a dip in the Ganga. Dude, I love this homage-shit, man. I haven't seen...you know...the goods on a babe in a Hindi film since the last time Ganga was unclean, hey Ram. ( Yes, I haven't seen Shaque and I suggest you don't, too. )

What a dump of a movie. This is the last time I go to see a film just because it has Rahman music in it. Humph!