daguerreotype

the original reservoir dogs from 2000 BC

There's a thing in my pocket

an extraordinary ad copy, enhanced by evocative visuals and a lingering voice over, Nokia N95 television commercial is not one thing, its many.

There's a thing in my pocket,
but it's not one thing, it's many
It's the same as other things
but exactly like nothing else.
It has an eye and an ear
that shares what billions of humans see.
It's not a living thing,
but if you feed it it will grow.
It can rally the masses,
it can silence the crowd.
It can speak a thousand words
but it has no voice.
It can find you the places
so you can get lost.
And it can let others feel
what you've just been touched by
There's a thing in my pocket,
but it's not one thing, it's many

Are we so dumb?

Bangalore Times, dated 6th August 07 carried a news item on how four beautiful ladies rediscovered their youth thanks to a magic potion called Olay Moisturizer. The creation was touted as being capable of bringing back vitality to the skin, reducing aging marks and making a woman appear more youthful.
This article, which covered about half the front page, was presented as a news item by the Times News Network. At no place was it mentioned that this was a product endorsement or an advertisement. It was worded so as to impart an impression of being an account of a new idea.
If that wasn’t enough, the same night on Zoom TV, a daily show called Maximum Style, featured the same four ladies. Here the design was even more preposterous. It was made to seem as if two weeks ago, the ladies had been presented with some mysterious blend to use on their skin and present their opinions on it after two weeks on the show.
And believe it or not, they all loved the product, they were glowing, had started looking younger, had started getting more time for themselves by saving the time spent with beauticians, their husbands had started loving them more, all in all, this concoction brought about a transformation in their lives in two weeks, such an elixir for happiness it turned out to be.
Now of course, they were just dying to find out what this spectacular manna from heaven was. The magician who could offer them deliverance, a learned scientist cum beautician cum researcher cum problem solver who, all the while was smiling smugly, listening to the beauties extol the virtues of his creation. I wonder why he didn’t get the product patented; he’d have the world’s most beautiful women eating out of his hand.
After the customary build-up and the inevitable break, the time of reckoning was announced, and with all the requisite fanfare, sushmita sen was introduced as the ambassador who would reveal the name and prevent the abduction of the future Nobel Laureate Dr. Getafix by Paris Hilton.
But for some reason, sushmita sen wasn’t too happy, maybe she didn’t get a free sample or maybe she felt there was not enough spotlight on her, maybe she just found the entire idea too ridiculous to be enthusiastic about it. In what was clearly the most dreadful performance of her life, she went about making the kind of claims even himesh reshamiya would hesitate to make, in such a desultory and contrived manner that it seemed as if she had been woken from her bed and forced to read the lines at gunpoint.
Irrespective of the actresses’ demeanor, the advertisers’ notion that the audience will be taken in by such monkey business proves the mental bankruptcy in the media/advertising sector in our country. It is also a perfect explanation for the innumerable ads which drain your patience instead of inciting to purchase. That’s why we get zero-imagination messages from financial services and banks, whose creators also may get confused between their own clips and the competitors. That’s why a brilliantly conceived 8 pm ‘aath ke thaath’ is a much less discussed ad than the exasperating priyanka chopra – saif – lux ‘love saga’

Silence

Bergman passed away this week. I wouldn’t call myself as big a devotee of his work as innumerable others but that’s probably because I didn’t or couldn’t appreciate them. In spite of that, my fervor for cinema has been greatly enhanced by some oh this great directors’ works like Smiles on a summer night, Silence, etc.

I was particularly moved by Smiles….., by the positive and exuberant tenor of the film, which, I thought, was otherwise lacking in his other movies like Through a Glass Darkly, Shame etc.

Through a glass…., which is often critically acclaimed as his finest work, is marked by a melancholy, in fact, an air of anxiety that underneath the tranquil exterior, a bizarre tragedy is waiting to happen. True, that’s what the director intends to portray, and in that context, it is brilliant, but, this rendered the whole movie too ‘sad’ for my liking.

Again, in most of his movies, I could never connect to the characters, be it the doctor and writer in Through a Glass, the philandering woman in silence, or the hermetic couple in Shame. They never appeared to be ordinary people leading ordinary lives; instead, they would always be a part of the directors’ own world than the viewers’ milieu which, along with Kieslowski, was a regular feature of Bergmann movies.

Of course, these opinions might sound juvenile and rubbish to some who swear by Bergmann and I’m sure there would be millions out there. Also, I don’t have any unalterable beliefs as I have barely seen six or seven of his movies. Maybe after watching some more of the prolific director’s movies, I might end up refuting my own views.

Living to the ninth decade of his life, he must have been pleased and content, conscious that his work will continue to be revered by multitudes for many decades, and maybe even centuries.

my views on cinema

Lately, there’s been talk of the Indian Cinema audience having become more discerning and perceptive to novelty, exemplified by the success of movies like cheeni kum, metro, bheja fry etc. Whether this is a fact or not is an imponderable, my only contention is that barely few weeks after the aforesaid ‘intelligent’ films, we had the epitome of buffoonery smugly patting his back thanks to the mature viewers who thronged at theatres to watch aap ka suroor, an unabashed display of self-aggrandizement by director-music director-composer-hero-superstar himesh reshammiya. Never in the history of world cinema has anyone had enough gumption (read bigheadedness) to bring one’s childhood fantasies on screen.
Getting back to the presumably intelligent cinema, I watched ‘Cheeni kum’ with quite a bit of anticipation. After all, it had the two most versatile actors we have and the guy with the best comic timing. The film started beautifully, for the first hour the feeling was that of having a refreshing experience, something very different from what we are accustomed to and still very engaging. But gradually, everything started to fall apart and the movie started turning into the exact opposite of what its title proclaimed. The criminal was the unforgivable hackneyed character of the boo-hoo-hoo-I have blood cancer-still-I’m-so-cool girl. What made it worse was the girl’s performance. She ended up reminding you of the days when child artistes were ‘Master’ this and ‘Baby’ that and used to have Lata Mangeshkar sing ‘Hai Na, Bolo Bolo’ for them. The whole idea of the relationship between the girl and bachchan was so stale and cloying that it would make you throw up. The amateurish attempt to portray the girl as a smart-alec was so unconvincing that even bachchan was struggling in his scenes with her. It was frustrating to watch an otherwise good effort getting negated by some inane and nauseating sequences.
By the way, in the very days when the child actors used to be presented in Indian cinema as fat, fair and foolish, came the greatest Indian movie about children and on growing up, Kitaab. Gulzaar's greatest work after Angoor can remind you of Cinema Paradiso and Amarcord. Some excellent performances by Raju, Uttam Kumar and fairly good work by the other kids as well, combined with the characteristic sensitivity of Gulzar combined to create a memorable work of Indian cinema. And of course, the music by the greatest musician of Indian cinema, with the classic ‘Dhanno ki ankhon mein’ and the outrageous 'VIP underwear Banian' which by itself are reasons enough to watch the movie. It’s unfortunate that the theme of a child growing up, which has been exploited so beautifully in European cinema and which touches us all, had not seen any other movie as yet. Unless of course, you are ready to call rubbish like Ek chhoti si love story cinema.

The meddlesome fools in our country

While reading the article “Protests, yet roses all the way” on the back page of the Feb 15th Bangalore edition of the Hindu, I experienced that familiar sensation of impotent rage, which afflicts a substantial majority of us, surging up yet again. We all have felt that sickening helplessness at some time or the other, being heckled by a prejudiced cop, getting roughed up by an errant shopkeeper, or simply being shoved out of a queue by someone. This is probably the single most damning affliction which impedes those with an honest intent to improve things from entering the mainstream.

Quite evidently, there aren’t any practical ideas by which an individual can take care of this menace. The onus is on our judicial and legal system. Why shouldn’t the organizations like Shiv Sena, Bajrang Dal, RSS et al be labeled as militant outfits and banned? These outfits, which have had reporters, policemen and the whole nation being witness to their destructive tendencies, are flourishing in our midst, and there is no conscious effort to curb their influence. These outfits are aiming to destabilize the entire social structure and if they had their say, India would soon turn into a rogue nation closed to the outside world. It is really distressing that people are actually predisposed towards the ramblings on a supposed ideology which doesn’t really exist.
Another significant aspect of this whole mess is the moral right of these outfits to stand up for Indian culture. Most of them wouldn’t know Khajuraho from the Statue of Liberty; the number of heritage sites in India, or the capital of Jharkhand. In no way does the Indian or any culture commemorate communal violence and disparage the noble vision of togetherness celebrated on Valentine’s Day. It’s high time we stopped allowing ourselves to be dictated by a set of individuals who have no capability to interpret anything but claim to have interpreted the glorious Indian culture?

mobs

Hope, desperation, humor, dejection, animosity, nostalgia, desire the biggest ingredient for dramatics that surpasses them all; patriotism. The character of John Mason played by an aging sean connery, in the somewhat watchable Rock says "patriotism is the virtue of the vicious".

In my opinion, if you are a patriot, you can't be against casteism, racism, regionalism or communalism, they work on the same construct, just the expanse is different. As far as India is concerned, I'd surely like to know where the quintessential India is. In Karnataka, I feel as much an outsider as a Spaniard would, probably more, because, I don’t have a fair-skin. Each state, each province these days is trying harder to protect its boundaries, its regionalism, its language, I don't even need to bring up cases like north east, where, it is usual to be confronted with questions like "are you from India". So, where's the India we're all getting so emotional about?. Here you have people grouping together to fight anyone once they find a common ground, India is just a collection of temporary mobs which change as per convenience. Issues like caste, reservations, religion, region, are all excuses.

hangover

an aftertaste of cheap alcohol mixed with anything that appears unidentifiable, the characteristic morning sounds of feet dragging, the pervading smell of human innards lying all over the floor which had rebelled against the persistent chemical warfare of the previous night, deciding that enough's enough and rushing out of their hopeless bodily cages to plunge to their death rather than undergo the torture. That tender little pulp of tissue and nerves, something more valuable and smarter than any of our gadgets can ever be, those we protect with our dear lives even in somnolence; that tender mass; it deserts all its tenderness to hammer on till we aver that we would never again let it get molested like this.

coffee

Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and cigarettes is not conventional cinema, it doesn’t have a script, doesn’t have central characters, doesn’t have a beginning or an end, doesn’t have good vs. evil, doesn’t have love, lust, stunts, or, for that matter, actors. There are no performances; the film is just a compilation of some apparently banal conversations over a cup of coffee accompanied by a cigarette.

Now, what’s so special about it, its impossible to describe, just watch it, the only selling point would be that the conversationalists are some of the most brilliant minds in the worldwide film industry; go ahead, take a cup of coffee, take a drag and let your thoughts wander freely, the talks will never end, you’ll want to watch it over and over again.