Presidentgate

I saw two movies today (I saw another one last night, which I would want to write about, but maybe later) that have a lot in common.

Both 2008 movies, made by directors, who have made some of the most well-known American movies in the last decade or so, who are very highly respected, but also ones who tend to go overboard at times - Ron Howard and Oliver Stone.

Both movies are about US Presidents, both Republicans - without doubt, the two most unpopular people the world has seen holding that position - Richard Nixon and George W. Bush.

And both movies make us realize that even the Leader of the Free World is, all said and done, a human being.

The similarities pretty much end there.

While Howard's Frost/Nixon is a taut, thriller-like, period drama, concentrating almost completely on the run-up to and recording of the famous David Frost interviews of Richard Nixon, Stone's W. is more of a spoof, a comic retelling of the life of George, Jr.

Frost/Nixon is one of the finest movies I have seen this year, and even though my vote goes to Milk (I haven't seen The Reader yet), I think F/N could be a very strong contender for the Best Motion Picture Oscar. I don't know much about Nixon, and his entire legacy seems to be overshadowed by Watergate, but I got a pretty good idea of how painful it must have been for someone with as high an opinion of oneself as Nixon did, to the extent of almost believing that the President's chair brought him divine powers, to be the most reviled person in the country.

No one had a doubt that Nixon had committed a crime in abetting the burglars who had broken into the Watergate hotel, except maybe Nixon himself. And the interview was meant to give him a chance to confess, to apologize for letting the people of USA down. While his plan was to make use of the fact that the person interviewing him was just a talk-show host, known more for talking to starlets, and make one last attempt to revive his dead political career by coming across as a misunderstood statesman. Did he succeed?

We all know that he did not. But the movie tells us that he almost managed to. And the pain on Frank Langella's Nixon's face when he realizes that his apparently unworthy adversary has dealt a body blow, from which there is no recovery, in the last round of the sparring match that he had been winning almost by a knockout is killing. It shows that behind that smiling face, impressive built and clever conversationalist lied a somewhat delusional, weak, old man all too aware of the mistakes he had committed.

Aided by an amazing support cast including Sam Rockwell, Kevin Bacon and Oliver Platt, not to forget Michael Sheen (seen earlier very memorably as Tony Blair in The Queen), the film is a fairly unbiased, slightly fictionalized, account of the end of the fall of a successful politician and the beginning of the rise of an unsuccessful performer.

W., as I said, is a comedy, filled with, or at least I hope it is filled with, hyperbole. Because if all of it were true, this would be more a horror film than a comic one.

The film starts with the Oval Office meeting in the early 2000s, which gave birth to the term Axis of Evil. And 5 minutes into the meeting, you realize that this is a bunch of over-confident nincompoops, who have dangerously little concern for anything outside the US, or maybe even outside Texas.

The film keeps going back and forth between earlier instances from Bush's life - like his hazing at college, his occasional conflicts with his dad and the barbeque lunch where he met Laura - and the series of mishaps that his presidency was.

We all have heard and lived to see in gory detail everything that was wrong with the Bush years. So, instead of making me feel angry or pained at how casually they treated war (Bush's advisors were discussing the merits of the pie they were eating, at the dinner meeting to discuss the absence of any WMDs in Eye-rak, after hundreds of people on both sides had been killed) or how their policy in the Mid-East is dictated solely by their love for oil, it just made me realize how unsuited a person Bush was to handle the entire post-9/11 situation. An overgrown kid, who just wanted to run a baseball club, drink beer and eat pretzels, and who contested the Texas gubernatorial elections mainly because he was tired of his dad favoring Jeb, who was running for Florida, ended up spending 8 long years in the White House.

I have a feeling it was infinitely more painful for him than it was for any of us.

Bangalore/Delhi

The two cities that I love the most might end up being very similar soon. That is, Bangalore might catch up with Delhi in a number of ways, if it hasn't so already.

Old people being brutally killed for money in posh areas. Check.

VIP cars running over pedestrians. Check.

Worshipping Gods

I do a fair bit of wikipedia-hyperlink-navigation at work, on occasions when I don't have too much work at hand. So, today I was reading up on the Latter Day Saint movement, the one started by Joseph Smith Jr.

Reading it, I was reminded of the South Park episode (Season 7 Episode 12), where they explain 'All About Mormons'. And it made me think of something that I hadn't when I saw the episode a couple of years back.

According to Wikipedia, 'The Book of Mormon is a sacred text of the churches of the Latter-Day Saint movement. It was first published in March 1830 by Joseph Smith, Jr. as The Book of Mormon: An Account Written by the Hand of Mormon upon Plates Taken from the Plates of Nephi. According to Smith, the book was originally written in otherwise unknown characters referred to as "Reformed Egyptian" on golden plates that he discovered in 1823 and then translated. The plates, Smith said, had been buried in a hill near his home in Manchester, New York, where he found them by the guidance of an angel named Moroni'.


In the South Park episode, there's this part:

Blacksmith: There goes that kooky Joseph Smith
Customer: You know, he claims he spoke with God and Jesus.
Woman: Well, how do you know he didn't?

Well, how do we know he did and wasn't just high on some quality weed when he came across some weird chap in the forest who might have introduced himself as,"I...am...a...moron. Moron...I".

And the thought that I was talking of was this - how do we know a frustrated chap in his forties living in Mecca in 610 CE actually received a revelation from God, and did not just think up the entire thing as a final shot at doing something worthwhile and achieving fame.

Or, for that matter, how do we know if, several years before this, a shepherd from Egypt actually did receive two stone tablets authored by God (if only there was a Booker then!) on the top of Mount Sinai, and did not just come up with the theory to control the unruly crowd he had decided to lead but had given up on pretty soon.

The three stories are fairly similar, and appear equally fantastic. As much as Area 52 or a stone idol drinking milk. It's just that the first one I spoke about was the most recent, less than 200 years old, and so appears more unbelievable than the other two.

And, well, I picked the 2nd and 3rd examples because they are similar to the first. In general, all religion, not the kind where one paints his face red and shouts Go ManU! at his TV, but the one where you start believing that there is some cool dude sitting up there or flowing all around you, taking the fall for all your dumb acts (you know stupid stuff we keep doing time and time again - wars, disturbing nature's balance, marriage, etc), is based on such humongous leaps of faith.

Why make fun of Mormons then? At least the Mormon men have more (legal) fun than those from any other religion. Hey, I just realized that there is another similarity between the first example and the second one. The former does not have a limit as far as I know, while the latter has a limit of 4.

Worshipping False Gods

A lot of supposedly great actors have this habit of adopting a tick, a certain mannerism, in order to portray a character on stage or in front of the camera. Particularly in those cases when the character is significantly different in terms of age or background from the actor in real life.

I am not sure how difficult it is to play such characters as I am no authority on acting, considering that my last major outing as an actor was in an inter-house mono-acting competition in Class XII (I did win the 3rd prize though). Well, I did play a bush (a bush, not The Bush) in engineering college in an inter-hostel event called Music Manoranjan and then a bar dancer in the same event the subsequent year, both of which had major age and background difference from the real me, but let's ignore my stellar achievements for the moment.

I find these ticks really irritating and rather unnecessary. And, unless I am grossly mistaken, these are more common in Indian and other Asian films compared to American or European ones.

The other night I was watching Ek Ruka Hua Faisla (ERHF) and got really pained by Pankaj Kapoor's lip-licking affectation and Annu Kapoor's general over-acting. Pankaj Kapoor is arguably one of India's best actors (even though there are several of his performances that I find irritatingly ordinary, and just a handful that deserve the credit he seems to get all the time), and I wonder why he could not have played the character in a normal manner. Annu Kapoor, on the other hand, is not all that good an actor to begin with, but then some other actor could surely have done a better job. Or did Basu Chatterjee owe him a role?

I watched ERHF and 12 Angry Men back-to-back actually and their performances are strikingly bad when compared with those by Lee J Cobb (Pankaj Kapoor's counterpart) and Joseph Sweeney (Annu Kapoor's).

What is even more striking is that I hadn't realized in my earlier viewings of the two movies, how close a copy of the original ERHF is. To the extent that just as Jack Warden offers a chewing gum stick to another juror in 12 Angry Men towards the start of the film, M K Raina does it in ERHF. Of course, while Jack Warden wants to leave for a baseball game, Raina has to leave for a show of the movie Mashaal.

So, even though ERHF is a great Hindi movie and one that has found a major 'cult' following in these times, I was made to wonder how much credit should really go to the director, or even most of the actors. Performances by people like K K Raina or S M Zaheer, which I really liked earlier, paled when I realized that they probably just had to watch the original a couple of times and copy it for the Indian version.

One major difference, where the Indian makers showed some original thought, was to not make Pankaj Kapoor declare right at the beginning his reasons for his unreasonable behavior. The revelation hits home harder at the end, unlike in 12 Angry Men, where Cobb takes out his son's photo right at the beginning and spills everything out.

Nonetheless, if you haven't seen Ek Ruka Hua Faisla, please do give it a try. Even if a frame to frame copy of a Hollywood classic, it deserves credit for being a rare, tautly made Hindi film.And it was made when foreign DVDs weren't so easy to come by either, thus requiring greater effort to copy. Here's the Google Video link.

Happy New Year and all that...

And, well, keeping up the tradition:


Damn, I am slowing down!

Lattoo

Saw that obscure Aamir movie a short while back. It also stars these terrible, very ordinary-looking women called Asin and Jiah Khan. Asin should go back to the South. And Jiah Khan should go back to romancing old men.

A really terrible film, if you ask me. The hall was, not unexpectedly, almost empty, but for me and a few old ladies (that's one of the sentences you never plan on using).

They seem to have made a hash of the Tamil movie that they have blatantly copied. Which makes it a frame to frame copy of Memento. Which was a terrible film to begin with.

The songs suck. This can't be AR Rahman! And why have they got so many songs in a film that's supposed to be a taut thriller.

And who taught the cameraman how to hold a camera. Or probably no one ever did.

Absolutely boring. They should have at least publicized it a bit. Might have pulled in a few more people. Would be a huge flop.

Aamir Khan should give up making movies. That one with that buck-toothed kid was the absolute bottom I thought he could get to.

Irreversible

While it is true that a woman should be able to dress as she pleases, it is not always wise. - Roger Ebert (in the review for Irreversible)

Am watching this movie called I Spit On Your Grave. I have seen some real crazy shit in movies. In fact, I have grown so immune to bloodshed in movies (but probably not in real life) that I normally choose a gory/horror/violent movie to watch while having my lunch/dinner at home.

But, there are some movies that just kill me. Irreversible was the first. Last House on the Left was the other one. And I'm watching ISOYG right now. Which Ebert gave no stars in his original review. Which is quite discouraging for any film. But, I don't think the movie is that bad (it has a near 5-point rating on IMDb). It is probably devoid of any artistic merits, but it does bring about the horrors of the crime it is about very very strongly. Ebert says that he felt ashamed after watching the movie. And I think that is what this movie is supposed to do. I am 3/4ths into the movie. And if I were Ebert (and how I wish I could have the same authority as he does), I would have given it 3.5 stars.

We really do need disgusting movies like these.
_____________________________________

Updated later: I just got done with watching the entire movie. And no, we don't need movies like these. It is very evidently a soft-porn movie that is trying to earn brownie points by saying that they are on the woman's side, when they are just trying to show as much nudity and titillation as possible.

And I pity the people who would find this sad sad movie titillating.

My Best Friend

I think I love dogs more than human beings. No, I am not into bestiality. We'll talk about the kinky stuff some other time. I mean ell-ooo-veee-eee love. Or a form of it. OK, let's get along or I'll write a few hundred words on a topic I think I am an expert on.

Well, as far as the comparison with human beings is concerned I don't think it is that big a deal. Considering my low opinion of most people, I probably love a snail more than most human beings.

But, I somehow feel really really happy in the company of dogs. And the dogs generally reciprocate.

Two recent instances.

Last Saturday, I spent about 6-7 hours at my boss's home discussing a deal. He has recently bought a Labrador pup and he's a couple of months old now (the pup, not my boss). He was named Frodo earlier, but was renamed as Schumi soon after. And I think this name does suit him better. He is one crazy, ultra-energetic kid. All through the day, interspersed with brief moments of sleep (his, not mine), he kept trying to press keys on my laptop, tear my boss's wife's dupatta, eat the dining table off, bite our fingers off, bite my jeans off, etc. As is evident, the poor chap is teething, and needs to have something between his teeth all the time. All the rubber balls have been destroyed already. So, while my boss and a senior discussed NPVs and IRRs and debt-equity ratios and what not, I took on the responsibility of handling Mr Schumi. I would love to get paid for playing with dogs. I have been pursuading my boss to get him to our office some time soon.

The next day, after all the planning at my boss's place, I accompanied him to a client's home in Chennai. Yeah, I have to work Sundays too, on some occasions. This client's home, which was more a museum than a house, had four dogs. One of the dogs was this huge jet-black Lab called Kipper. He is supposed to be a guard dog and is not allowed inside the house. So while the other dogs - Candy (a pug (thank you Hutch)), Amber (a cross between a Lab and some other breed) and Melody (a Pomeranian) - after having their fill of licking the client's 9-year old son (whose name I can't recall) ran inside the house, poor Kipper could only follow them to the door and then stopped. I wonder how much pain he must have been subjected to to make him understand that crossing that threshold was wrong. Anyway, so I went and patted this chap (Kipper, not the kid). And he jumped on me and put his forelegs on my chest. I hugged him real hard, and we became friends. This was towards the end of our meeting there, but for the remaining 20 min that we stayed there, he kept on following me and apparently loved it when I scratched his neck and back. I know he loved it because everytime I stopped he would put one of his paws on the palm of my hand and ask me to keep doing it.

Was missing our dogs real bad. Sheru and Heena.

The first dog we 'bought' as against the stray ones we used to generally take in earlier, was a German Shepherd in 1991. I still remember very clearly when my father brought her from the Jamshedpur Kennel Club to my aunt's place where we were staying. She was just 1.5 months old (I know this is getting tiring, but I mean the dog and not my aunt) and got completely confused in that huge dupleix apartment. We drove to our place, which was around 2 hours away the same night, and on the way I named her Heena. After the RK Films Henna that I had just seen.

All my memories from that time, when I was about 9, to the time I got into engineering college are marked by her presence. She was a pure German Shepherd, and had a recorded lineage probably older than mine, and grew from a tiny pup into a huge dog in a few months.

I left home after Class XII. As luck would have it, my parents got transferred soon very close to the place I was doing my coaching at. I remember the day they first came to meet me at my hostel in Kota. They brought Heena along and she climbed on to my bed and slept there while we went out for lunch.

About a month or so before JEE, I came back home. During the next 4-5 weeks, all the time I spent preparing for the exam, she would sit at my feet. My mother still thinks I got through because Heena wanted me to.

Towards the end of my 2nd year we bought another dog. His name's Sheru and he's still with us. Being a pup and a little crazy in the head, he obviously used to get more attention from my parents and my sister. The next time I visited home, I noticed for the first time that Heena had grown old. Because she showed it. She wouldn't get excited when I picked up the chain to go for a walk. She wouldn't play. Or even when she did, it was more because it was expected of her.

At the end of my 3rd year, I ended up doing my internship in my dad's company. Stayed at home. One evening, as I was taking Heena out for a walk, a cow passed by. Heena jumped on her and the cow hit her on the face with its feet. Heena didn't make a sound, but I noticed a few minutes later that she was bleeding from the mouth. I called my mom up (my dad had been transferred and was hundreds of miles away). She rushed back from work. We took Heena to a vet. We took her to several vets over the next few days. But the bleeding would not stop. She normally used to sleep under my mom's bed. But the last night, she crawled under mine. Next morning, after my mom and sister had left, I went to see how she was doing. I sat down beside her. Took her head on my lap. A few minutes later, she passed away.


I still remember that day like it happened just now. And it feels like that. My mom drove back crying all the way. I went to my sister's school to get her. I could not tell her on the way. By the time we got back home, she had guessed anyway.

Heena was buried behind our house.

My dad was alone, and he probably felt it the most. A subordinate of his had a Dachshund couple, and they had a litter soon after this. Most of the pups got sold, but one slightly frail female pup got left out. My dad took her. And named her Heena.

TOW We Resume 'Normal' Transmission

Last one was the 150th post. Decided that the usual racist crap - you know where I rant against surds, chinks, nepalis, maddus, muslims, hindus, etc. - would not be in good taste in the current conditions in India, when everyone is getting touchier than usual about such things. And I do see the irony in looking for taste in a deliberately tasteless post. So, I decided to write on the thing I could identify as the next most outrageously idiotic. But, I was hoping to get some more comments. Just one person chose to comment, and that too anonymously. Damn you!!

Work and other higher pursuits have kept me from writing about a lot of stuff I would like to.

These stuffs include:

1) The fact that I am missing Delhi now after reading this.*

2) A value-for-money, slightly unhygienic, hole-in-the-wall joint called Zaks that I discovered recently, which serves Arabic food. I had khaboos, or khubus as they spell it, and grilled chicken after such a long time!

3) I had a Takashi Miike retrospective at my home recently. Saw Ichii the Killer, Visitor Q and Crows: Zero almost back to back. Several more are in the pipeline. I can't even begin to describe how much I enjoyed watching these movies. So, I won't.

4) Am almost through with a book by Syd Field. He would be a really great author to read if he didn't keep dropping names and enlisting all his achievements. His other books might be better. This one's supposed to be autobiographical and he is really painful. But his theories on screenplay are quite interesting, if not always as revolutionary as he makes them out to be.

5) My Tanzania trip got cancelled. Now, I am never going to talk about my trips till they actually materialise. Though I am not particularly unhappy about the Tanzania thing. We were going to do around 3500 km BY ROAD in about a week, and were covering pretty much the whole of the country except Mt Kilimanjaro, Mt Meru, Serengeti and other touristy areas. Plus meeting a whole lot of boring government officials.

6) Have finally given in to the temptation of buying original DVDs, which have all the additional features intact, unlike the pirated ones. Have bought Taare Zameen Par, Rock On!, The Bourne Trilogy, Om Shanti Om and a couple of others in recent times. I also found this gem of a DVD brought out by FTII, which has the first films of around 20 FTII grads, including Jaya Bachchan, Smita Patil, Sriram Raghavan and some others.

7) Have taken up reading soft copies of grahic novels again. Mainly because sourcing all of them in Bangalore is difficult. Not, as you thought, because I realized buying each one of them was getting too expensive. Nope.

8) Found a DVD print of Burn After Reading, which is quite good. But Coens have the habit of coming up with an under-whelming experience once in a while to balance their general greatness. So, NCFOM had to be followed by something like this.

* Disclaimer (issued after the anonymous commenter struck again): I did not do everything that the blogger talks about. No, I didn't buy cotton kurtis at Dilli Haat (did have momos and fruit beer though). No, I didn't swear and curse in a bus after being groped. And no, that does not mean that I was groped and enjoyed it instead. As far as I can remember, I certainly never had to worry about my long-wrinkled-cotton-Janpath-skirt getting tangled across my legs and feet (I generally preferred wearing mini-skirts).

And I didn't go to school in Delhi for him. I didn't go to school in Delhi at all.

But I did bitch about women in LSR.

Blessings

I hit upon a couple of undeniable truths over the last few weeks.

If you were intelligent enough to do engineering in India, and if you still fucked up and could not get into an IIT, you really are not worth any respect. Of course, if you were one of those morons who did BA, BCom and the other weird stuff people seem to come up with to help the lesser mortals feel good about themselves, you probably are just lucky to have access to the net to read this.

And if you were one of those hundreds of people who decided to do an MBA, and then ended up being one of those idiots who could not crack CAT and could not get into an IIM, well, you really are sad.

You know that water tank on the roof of your building. Unless you are living in some chawl in Mumbai, which you should be, if you ain't from an IIT and/or an IIM. In which case these instructions should anyway be too complicated for you. Go, climb those stairs to the roof. And, then, go jump into that tank.

Dasvidaniya!