Sandy Hooks (and) The World

9:30 a.m, December 14^th

Sandy Hooks Village,

Newtown,Connecticut

Adam Peter Lanza, an armed 20 year old man, wearing a military outfit, killed 28 people in a span of 20 minutes. First he shot his mother in the face, 4 times. Then he stormed into the local elementary school killing twenty kids (all between the ages of 5 to 7) and six adults of the female staff. The 28^th ‘victim’ was Lanza himself.

Adam Lanza

The police arrived. No shots were fired by them. Investigation says that Nancy Lanza (the perpetrator’s mother) was a firearm enthusiast who used to stock guns and believed that violence was the only way to survive once the economy crashed, which according to her was very eminent. She wanted her kids to take this seriously, so they accompanied her to the shooting range on a regular basis. Nancy Lanza was a woman who could predict the fall of American economy but was oblivious of the eminent fall of her son’s sanity.

The victims

The crime is unforgivable. What had the children done to meet such a horrifying end? To Adam Lanza they were merely a collateral damage in his superior battle against the world. What enmity he had against the kids is a mystery and that is what the whole world seems to be obsessed about. Sure it is puzzling. This tragedy affects the whole world and the whole world needs to contribute in solving the crime. We need to spread awareness about the 28 people who died in Connecticut, because it so happens that an incident like this rarely takes place in our country. We need to spread awareness and we need to tell people how this event has scarred us for life. We are a global community and we unite against issues like this, right? 

So what do we do? We twitter, we blog and we put up status updates, cursing Lanza, cursing his mother and cursing the American government. As soon as we are done with this, the little children wouldn’t have died for nothing! They were actually a mere collateral damage in our superior battle against the world, which begins with regulating American laws concerning possession of firearms. We are all Lanzas, shooting with our keyboards into the virtual world of internet.

Meanwhile, as the people of the cynical world are engrossed in their pseudo-humanity, the top management of the media houses is hunting for the next piece of information, rather the next bait. When they take a coffee break, they switch on their respective news channels. It warms them to see so many people dancing to their tunes. The chairman pats the backs of his executives for choosing the right ‘piece’. The sponsors are happy. The increased primetime viewership assures them that their marketing investment decisions have been sound. Other entertainment channels sulk because they cannot come up with such interesting pieces, as their network is supposed to air reality shows where the actors take too much time to rehearse their scripts, causing a further lessening of profits. They pacify themselves by saying that the audience will get tired of the violence and will come back for some animation films to uplift themselves and some nerdy sitcoms to laugh at. So the question that arises is- How much do those children mean to this industrial world where success is measured by profits? Money brings happiness, so the only way to quantify happiness is to count the money. So in a way, when some people are earning money through others’ tragedy, they are buying happiness. So happiness- like money- does not go out of system, just changes hands. Is this too heartless an idea? Well, If Lanza can happen to this world, so can this idea.

History tells us that Lanza is nothing. He is a big thing today because we are now living in a ‘pro-peace’ world and not in the times of ‘violent land grabbing escapades’. So we believe. He is a big thing today because he is all over your internet and television screens today. He is a big thing because the issue was blown up like a balloon. Whether the reasons for this amplification are sentimental or monetary, are for you to choose; whichever choice comforts you more is the right choice.

When I say that this issue has been blown out of proportion, I do not mean that it was not horrifying. So here comes the need to define a limit to the ‘proportion’. The proportion is inversely related to your ignorance. Here’s a simple exercise-

1. Leave this article for a minute, open your local newspaper
2. Scan through it
3. Notice how many homicides, rapes and other violent cases you find in there
4. Remind yourself that is just your town. India being the seventh largest nation in the world contains hundreds of towns like yours
5. Do the math

Now would you tweet about it?

Probably not. I will tell you why, because nobody else is tweeting about it. It is not ‘trending’! So why would you discuss something that is not in fashion? Isn’t it elementary that you discuss what is ‘in’ rather than discuss what is important? There was a time when people were reprimanded for not doing but only talking. If that is not the case now, can we at least discuss the right things?

New Delhi. The evening of 18^th December.  A 23 year old girl and her boyfriend boarded a city transport bus. Surprisingly, they had only four co-passengers other than the driver. The co-passengers, not very surprisingly, started passing lewd comments towards the girl. This tactic was just to spark a violent argument with her boyfriend, which then gave them a reason to hit him up with iron rods. With the male taken care of, the men proceeded towards the female.

Late at night, a passerby found two bleeding beings, by the roadside. They were in a state of shock. The perpetrators long lost to the night.  

This incident is on the front page of Chennai’s issue of The Hindu, right below the detailed descriptions of GMR-Maldives tussle, Dhoni’s loss against England and Gujarat voting rounds, squeezed between an SBI advertisement and that of a highly reputed college that has started providing a master’s program in family business management.

 The girl and the boy were not the residents of United States of America, they were born and brought up in a busy Indian metropolitan city where the news of children being crushed under city buses is as usual as the weekly fluctuations of the stock market, where the head of the nation does not call press conferences every time people die. Because then he would have to be on the TV all the time. He would have a separate channel for himself.

I once asked someone, “Why does this city have such a disturbing road-accident rate?” The answer I got was more disturbing, “This is a metro, such things keep happening, you take care of yourself”. To my surprise, the same person was tweeting condolences to the Connecticut community, two days ago. Maybe the ‘Sandy Hooks Massacre’ is the new ‘Gangnam Style’ then. Sometimes I feel that being a global citizen has its disadvantages. Because there are no borders to adhere to, we start believing that we belong to the better part of the globe. Our reality becomes America. No more do we take steps to improve the quality of television in our country, we would rather watch international sitcoms that the internet gives us an easy access to. Not that it’s a bad thing to do, but don’t you forget that it’s just your computer screen that has the look of a developed rich economy. When you step out of your house, there’s still going to be gaping potholes, needy beggars and the undying stench of corruption. The exposure towards the better world is backfiring. The portal on your latest sharing device’s screen is just make-believe. Now when indigenous writers dream of plots for their story, they do not think of Kapoors, Mishras and Khans. They think of Mr. Smith and the bar on the Dewey Street. Including me. I do admit that in a fast-paced thriller, Anand Sharma would make a bad name for a protagonist. I would like to clarify here that I am not against the fact that internet provides access to global citizenship, hell I love the internet! But I try to retain my identity. Do you?

Israel has been torturing the Gaza Strip for a long time now. It is known to assassinate important leaders of its neighboring countries, until recently. It’s bombing on Sudan is a major discomfort to all the countries around it. The death toll and the living conditions are unimaginable. And let's not forget that Israel itself is under the constant threat of annihilation from these neighbors. The civil war in Syria has destabilized the whole of west Asia. With the various communities fighting for their rights, the governments of Sudan’s allied nations are distracted. It is said that Israel’s attack on Sudan was just a warning to Iran, which is probably supplying arms to Sudan and also 'allegedly' developing nuclear weapons, atomic bombs that could wipe out a country the size of Israel in a matter of seconds. One superpower that is supporting Israel in its violent endeavors is the United States of America. You see an integral part of the country’s economy functions on the selling of arms. When there’s no war, the arms sales take a drop. So “let the whole world fight, let me earn the money to defend my country against these violent countries”. Enter- greed. There is no deficiency in firearm production, so “let me sell some to my own citizens; so what if they are already drowning in taxes, there’s nothing wrong in providing money to support their government so that it can protect them from the violent countries out there!” But this injection of cynicism into the society has proved to be an overdose. And then we have reactions like those in Wisconsin and Sandy Hooks, Newtown.

Justice is a very relative term.  Ajmal Kasab’s death was celebrated with fireworks and processions. The death was just a part of the Mumbai tragedy. This fact was forgotten. So much are we in the clinches of media that we have stopped thinking for ourselves. The picture is being drawn in front of us and all we do is appreciate or criticize it. We too can pick up a brush, you know? But then surely we cannot trot the globe and collect all first-hand information ourselves. So we have to depend on the news channels to provide us with the relevant information. The news channels have competitors (it’s a money game after all) so they will try to attract you towards their particular channel. And this can only be done by showing you something attractive; content that is more magnetic than the competitor’s. Important news gayi tael lene (can kiss my ass). And thus we watch what we are provided with. “Yellow Journalism” is too extreme a term for the entirety of Indian Media. But there’s a mild jaundice fever, one can sense it.

This is how things are running. And new stuff will start running when this stops. What we can at least do is close the internet window occasionally and open the literal window of our rooms. There’s things we cannot ignore. There’s things we ought to see, we ought to do. Besides, this will also make way for a better torrent speed!

Just for the record folks, between last year and this year, the Syrian Civil war has killed 50000 people. This includes about 2500 children. Many of them were tortured to death. But surely the Connecticut issue is more grave and discussion worthy.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

Let me start by apologizing for the month long delay. Busy lives and a lack of good movies have kept us from posting reviews. But we're back. And now to business.

Whenever I watch a good movie on screen I tend to come out with a small smile plastered to my face. If it's a long awaited release or a sequel this smile lasts longer. If some of my favorite actors delivered fine performances in it the smile lasts even longer. The smile lasts the longest when I am too caught up in the experience to sit back and think about the movie. We've all been guilty of post-movie exuberance disorder. This year particularly has made me suffer the most, I think it is because of the number of big movie franchises that had their latest sequel/prequel/reboot this year. And I do suffer, the suffering starts the moment I begin to think about the movie and start deconstructing it.

I call it the Dark Knight Rises Effect. Not to be confused with the Matrix Revolutions effect where a sequel purely sucks.

Before I start on the review let me get something out of the way. This adaptation of Tolkien's novel The Hobbit differed from the novel in many ways. The characters were slightly different. Some of the plot points have been changed and some of them expanded. I will not complain about these as they would take up far too much time and they would require me to re-read The Hobbit. The movie differs from the novel. Some of you might be angry about the changes. I'm angry too, sometimes. But this review will not focus on those differences.

When I first read about the development of The Hobbit a few years ago I had no fears that it would not be made. I expected it to be made. LOTR had made three billion dollars. The studios had just found a prize winning formula, damned if they didn't exploit it. In fact The Hobbit would be easier to make than the LOTR as the story was adventurous yet lighter than the LOTR. There were pockets of darkness but it was nothing compared to the war and death that predominated Gandalf's later quests. I then learnt that The Hobbit had become two movies which did not feel natural as Peter Jackson had already adapted the longer novels into single movies instead of splitting them up. This year I learnt that the movies had been split into three parts to 'fully' tell the story. I was afraid that this three movie split was an effort to garner more profits. But I gave the director the benefit of doubt, he might genuinely be interested to narrate a riveting tale of adventure, loyalty, honor and bravery in great cinematic detail and quality. Looking at An Unexpected Journey I'm leaning on the theory that Tolkien has become Jackson's cash cow.

One is a gold hoarder the other is a dragon.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected journey covered the first leg of Bilbo's journey with the dwarves to reclaim their former home and hoard of precious metals, Erebor also known as the Lonely Mountain. Meanwhile dark forces are stirring, the elves keep twitching, Saruman is still a good guy and Gandalf is mysterious and old. As you can see plot-wise quite a lot of stuff happens. The all familiar aerial landscape shots that double as tourism adverts for New Zealand make the viewer feel right at home. The cinematography is spectacular as usual but the third dimension did not enhance my movie viewing experience nor was it used effectively as a medium by the filmmakers.

What is important is the way the story is told. I am reminded of a line that Gandalf delivered in this movie, "Power lies in the small things, small acts of kindness and love" or something. It is the small things that can irritate you, can mark the difference between a film and a movie, can show the commercial vision behind the movie. For example movies rely on character arcs that rarely surprise people anymore. You know that the scruffy orphan is going to win the baking championship because she was beaten at the musical choir showdown midway through the movie. In this movie too you could clearly see the character development taking place and unlike LOTR it was not well handled. More Avengers than The Godfather, do you see what I'm getting at. Action movies are littered with tiny little cliffhangers that you know the characters will clear but they include anyways because they keep you on the edge of your seat. At least they did, ten years ago. You know the ones I'm talking about? The character jumps across a chasm and instead of landing cleanly the character has to hold on to a ledge or an opportune plant growth with his/her fingertips till he/she is rescued. The little things make a difference, quite literally in Tolkien's universe but somehow the makers of The Hobbit failed to notice that.

Now the star of three successful adaptations.

Martin Freeman was a great Bilbo, unsure at first but slowly becoming adjusted to his new destiny as a hero of sorts. Sir Ian McKellen was his usual self. Fantastic. Can the man be anything else? Andy Serkis was back as Gollum, the show stealer. Elijah Wood made a very small appearance as Frodo and he looks younger than Daniel Radcliffe. Of the dwarves I have few words. None of them made lasting impression. None of them were as endearing as Gimli. They did a fine job sure, but nothing outstanding. The music just like the rest of the movie is good but it could have been better.

Soft young skin with Fair and Elrond Cream. Enriched with jujubes from Mirkwood.

Overall I'd say it was a good movie. Certainly a good experience. Disappointing though. Especially to those who've been waiting almost ten years to see it. Some of you might think I was being too harsh on the movie considering it was based on a children's book. My reply is this, the movie aimed to be more than a children's story. I recommend you watch this in a movie theatre.

IMDB Rating: 8.8/10 (This rating will probably decrease in the following weeks)

My Rating: 7/10

Skyfall (2012)

Sam Mendes has made some remarkable movies, few of them being Road to Perdition, Revolutionary Road and the much acclaimed Oscar Winning film American Beauty. So when it was announced that he was at the helm the new Bond project, people decided to not give up hope. Back in 2008, Marc Foster’s Quantum of Solace had scarred them. It's a feeling I can understand, it was a painful experience every Bond fan had to go through. Further back in 2005, when Daniel Craig stepped in to the shoes of Bond, he received mixed reviews. Critics loved him because he was one of the few Bonds who could act. The movie itself took some time to be loved. Why? It didn’t give us the image that Bond was actually Superman. Well, not all the time at least. Coming back to the present, let me put it this way, we have been rewarded for being loyal to the franchise. Skyfall is undoubtedly the best movie in the series.

Is it the best ‘Bond movie’? I would have to say no.

He just realized how awful Quantum was.

First of all, Daniel Craig is a powerhouse of an actor. In his first movie he was busy proving his Bond-ness, in the second one he was defending the title. In his last one, he decided to do what he knows best- acting. He puts his everything into the role and helps Bond reemerge successfully, this time as a human being.

The Antagonist, Mr.Silva is played by Javier Bardem. A great Bond villain played by the Biutiful actor. You don’t know who he is? Well then, this is No Country For Old Men.

You're not scared of this man? You should be.

Skyfall opens with a spectacular 10 minute long chase sequence in Istanbul. Soon after that you have the ritual opening song, this time sung by Adele. Even thinking about it qualifies for goose bumps. Sounds cool right? Perfect start for a Bond movie you might think. Till this point everybody loves the movie. From here onwards the whistles subside, the music gets serious (more of tense bass and less of jazz and brass) and Bond is seen sporting stubble, drinking away in some crowded and godforsaken beachside bar. At this moment people who haven’t paid for the popcorn stop eating it. Something is wrong. Suddenly all those negative reviews pop in your mind. You are on the verge of cancelling the dinner plans. Meanwhile, the movie goes silent. It goes dark. It is now progressing like an evening, slowly and mysteriously. You don’t expect poignant pauses and patient close-ups in a Bond movie! But it is happening. As the first half of the movie unfurls and comes to an end, all the people in the audience sit dumbstruck. Some feel fooled. Some feel rewarded.

The action formula is limited and the other franchises have tried almost everything. MGM’s regular bouts of bankruptcy, has given other studios an opportunity to trespass into their solo hero genre. We have the Mission Impossible franchise, the Transporter franchise, the Taken franchise and of course my favorite, the Bourne franchise (the most ‘moving’ of them all).

Even the goddamn poster is shaky.

Skyfall decides to solve this problem. And the solution is simple. We need to peek into the psychology of the audience. Why do people love to watch Bond movies? It’s the macho quotient. They feel tough. James Bond is invincible. No one can intimidate him (and believe me, villains try hard, they always take him for a walk around their estate, taking it up as their duty to explain to him, in unnecessary detail, their plans to conquer the world. They also inform him about the perils he needs to be aware of in case he decides to escape). He is handsome, he is sexy, he is rich and he is always surrounded by girls, guns and gadgets. But this picture is too rosy. We don’t watch the movies for only that. We watch them to know how he maintains this, how different villains try to take these essentials from him and how he always saves the world by not letting them do so. We got the point long back and it was wearing people out. They had stopped caring for the guy who always wins. There has to be some difference between James Bond and The Powerpuff girls. It was time to let people know what James Bond was all about. It was time to give them a reason to care for his life. It was time to show people that he too had feelings and that he too was nothing but another vulnerable human being with a painful past. Skyfall is a much needed installment. It is a movie the fans deserve. After a point of time, every enigmatic person has to reveal his secrets to become a closer friend. After which, he becomes a normal human being, just as boring. That is why people left the theater before the movie ended. They were not ready for this. Their fantasy had come to an end.

The scientific term for fantasies coming to an end is known as the Jar Jar Effect.

Movies in the late 20^th century and those of the 21^st century have always talked about the apocalypse some way or the other, sometimes unknowingly. And Skyfall is no exception. It talks about human corrosion with time. The imagery and metaphors are strong here and the dialogues, powerful. It is all about something you would not expect to be slid into a Bond movie (and believably so), motherhood. You have to be sufficiently intrigued by now.

Bond is not saving the world here; he is doing something more real and therefore more relatable. All you need to know is that this movie is different from all the Bond movies and about time so. Skyfall is more personal.

IMDB Rating: 8.2/10 (This rating will probably decrease in the following weeks)

My Rating: 4/5

Primal Fear (1996)

I return from nearly two weeks of silence with apologies. My end of term examinations are going on at the moment, which is leaving me completely burnt out. For better or worse I’m back and if you've read any of my earlier reviews you’ll know that I can whine on about how a film sucked or I can heap praise on films I loved. Well I could whine on for quite some time about how midway through Primal Fear you feel in your gut that this is a good movie, but it could have been much better.

Every time I try to be critical, people say I'm whining. Great Lord Ebert protect me from these creatures. 

Movies in Hollywood in the old days would be describable in seven words, something which hasn't changed over the years; in fact that was part of the pitch to producers. For example the 7 word treatment of Avatar is “Pocahontas with big blue aliens and humans”. For Primal Fear it is “Courtroom drama involving murderer and egomaniac lawyer”. For most of the movie it just plays just as that, a good courtroom drama, but nothing very special, especially for a person living on the 21st century. The story itself is simple. The murder of an Archbishop, a beloved member of the community, is the biggest story in the city. A hotshot lawyer, played by the smooth talking, silver haired Richard Gere, becomes the defense counsel for the alleged murderer, played by a very young and younger looking Edward Norton.

Richard Gere: proving that lawyers are always profitable, even if you're only playing them.

Now I will give you the reasons I found this movie good and not great or bad but just good, and since I’m still in exam mode I’m going to do it bullet points:
•Richard Gere gave a good performance, so did Laura Linney (the female lead). Frances McDormand (Fargo) also gives a standard-good-actress performance.
•Edward Norton delivers a fantastic bit of acting which I think launched him to fame. This is one of the people in the industry who should have won an Oscar by now. His act and more specifically his character keeps the show going.
•The script was pretty good. The direction and the editing were good. There were some electrifying scenes somewhere in the middle and right at the end of the film, but to balance it out the director must have deliberately kept a few scenes slow and crappy. For example: the crappy (I have no high brow English for you, I used it all up while bullshitting in my written exams) scenes between the two lead lawyers who just happen to have a romantic history behind them.

"Don't make me angry. I give away my parts to Mark Ruffalo when I'm angry."

In summation nothing particularly stands out in this movie except Edward Norton and the last five minutes of the movie. Over the years movies have developed something called the big reveal which has been brilliantly executed in the past in films like The Usual Suspects, The Prestige and The Illusionist. The reveal takes place in the last few minutes and usually blows your mind. And in that aspect I would rate Primal Fear ten out of ten for a marvelous reveal. 

IMDB rating: 7.6/10

My rating: 7.5/10

Soapbox Time: Amanda Todd and my three cents

I woke up today to a virtual shit-storm that had hid the internet a few hours ago. A teenager by the name of Amanda Todd had committed suicide. Amanda had visited internet chat rooms to meet new people and had flashed her breasts to a flatterer. A year later this person returned with a message on Facebook "If you don't put on a show for me I will send your boobs". She ignored the message. But this guy knew everything about her. The photo was sent to everyone she knew and thus began a life of cyber-bullying, schoolyard bullying, drinking, self harm (cutting) which finally culminated in a suicide.

Here is her story told through note cards by her:

The video brought a tear to my eye. My robot eye. The same eye that couldn't cry at his grandfather's funeral. I have never faced bullying to such a degree. But I wasn't always a gaunt six foot three guy who'll probably join you in making fun of himself and probably outdo you. A few years ago I was a scrawny five footer, easily moved to tears and hypersensitive. In boarding school. Life wasn't always great. I moved schools, gained some confidence, developed a shell and a self deprecating sense of humour. Now only very close friends know me as the clown Pirelli.

This wasn't Amanda's first attempt. She drank bleach the first time which only resulted in a visit to the hospital. Doesn't it sound fun when I say it like that? She failed in her first attempt but got it right in her second try. It sound s like she's an Olympic pole vaulter. And just like an Olympic pole vaulter she had to succeed in her attempts to get some recognition.

An incident like this always creates a lot of attention; the media and the hordes of mindless hash-taggers pounce on it and out come the accusations and the solutions. This particular incident has bred two kinds idiots. The first wants to raise awareness for Amanda and bullying. These jackasses are going to wear pink on Monday. To raise awareness! Like we don't know that bullying goes on. Like nobody f***ing know about it. Sure go ahead and raise awareness about breast cancer, educate people about it, raise money to fight it. Wearing pink for bullying isn't going to do shit. Except assuage your guilt. The people who were truly touched by this aren't going to wear pink. They are going to donate money, volunteer and push for change. You want to do something? Ask for new legislation that prevents this sort of thing.

Then there's the second kid of idiot. These arseholes agree with me about Idiot 1. They're not passive, they are active! They are going to change the world by talking to someone who is different from them, talking to the social outcast, talking to someone abnormal, talking to someone who is different and picked on.

They want to include them. To extend a hand of friendship towards them.

You know what's going to happen?

This human being will see the guilt and the pity in your eyes. And in that moment where you feel you are doing something monumental by putting your hand forward all they are going to see is a fake. A fraud that feels guilty and pity and feels that you need to talk to him to be "normal", to be accepted. This outcast usually feels worse than most people do because he/she is different, but today they'll feel worse than usual.

Thanks for the pity a**hole!

These social outcasts have friends too you know? It takes them longer to find someone like them, but when they do it's fantastic because finally they've found someone who understands them and allows them to be themselves around them.

Tell me, once you've befriended this abnormal awkward freak what then? Are you going to talk to this person regularly? What about the sensitive yet clueless people who'll see your hand of friendship and shake it with pleasure thinking to themselves they've finally found a friend. What happens to them a few weeks later when you've outgrown them or are too busy to talk to them or you find out you have nothing in common with them or you've forgotten all about Amanda Todd? Do you have any idea what it is going to do that person?

Why don't you get shoved into a confined place? Get called nasty names? Get beaten a few times? Then go and talk to them. You can bond over the abuse you've survived.

Don't huff and puff while you see the inaction and the passiveness and then race off to a half-baked half-assed plan to "include" someone different.

Think.

Feel.

Ask for stringent cyber-bullying laws that make sure that this does not happen again.

Come up with some good solutions. Some boundaries. At what point does it change from trolling or harmless fun to cyber bullying?

Should internet chat rooms be blamed? I often go these chat rooms to meet new people and discover new music and films. Blaming internet chat rooms would be like calling Taxi Driver a bad film because of that one loony who tried to assassinate the president to prove his love to Jodie Foster. Wouldn't it make more sense to publish guides to help teens understand the dangers of such chat rooms and the importance of some internet etiquette?

If you are going to talk someone you've ignored talk to someone who you like and connect with but you've been too scared to talk to because you friends make fun of him/her.

On Monday wear black or white to mourn Amanda Todd. Wear pink if you want to but follow it up with some action.

On a personal side note I would like to apologise to anyone who thinks I've bullied them. There were a few times I have taken my frustration out on someone else. I hope you forgive me. Bullying is a vicious cycle. I didn't know that a few years ago.

If you would like to disagree, shout your opinions, tell me to go shove a cactus up my anus or just talk and reminisce over the good old days when we got wedgies please comment below

RIP Amanda Todd. My condolences to the family.

Filmosophy: Barfi! vs Gangs of Wasseypur

I get very anxious when a highly anticipated movie is about to release. I fear that it will be ruthlessly panned just because it was wrongly or excessively marketed. Consider Blue for example. Had it been made without Akshay Kumar or Kylie Minogue in it, it could have saved a lot of money that was spent in buying these "brands". They could have spent it on better special effects and a better writer for that matter. But it seems they were not concerned about the quality anyway. They just wanted to sell a sub-standard product in the name of a big star. And I still don’t get it, why do these actors have to promote their movies to such an extent? Their presence is big enough an incentive. Such a waste of money for one big man’s stupid insecurity!

Think Jaws, but crappier.

Expectations, they spoil half the movies for me. They spoil more than half of your life. The concept of cognitive conditioning explains this phenomenon. Let’s say you watch an Alfred Hitchcock picture, a grade A thriller. And let us say it was your first thriller movie experience. You love it. You love the way the characters speak, the way the camera moves and the way the plot reveals itself seductively. You decide that thriller movies are your kind of movies. You then expect all thriller movies to the same for you, make you sit on the edge of you seat. So the next week when you buy a ticket for that seat, you do not expect yourself to slump on it halfway through the movie, bored. Now while nothing happens on the screen, you have the time to contemplate. Why would you think that this movie was going to be as good as the one you saw before? Did the plot promise that to you? Even if it did, why would you think that this director was as good as Hitchcock? And even if it was a Hitchcock movie, why would you think that this movie of his would be as good as his earlier work? Answer= because you did not think otherwise. Your experience(s) conditioned you to expect certain results and response when certain stimulus was inducted into the situation.

It is because of this that most movies are hated and panned, directors with a different vision of the genre- discouraged and shooed away. Scared of this, the businessmen funding these pictures coerce their writers to write something that is not very new, something that won’t find it hard to be accepted by the audience. It is because of our expectations we get exactly what we expected. And before long we start hating them for producing clichés. But what happens when we start expecting something new? This expectation is also based on an old experience. Maybe in the past, you were wooed by a movie that had attempted something new. This complex and fragile space in your mind, is what is targeted by the genius writers/directors of cinema. This is the only way they can survive while the producers still get to bank millions from their box office collections. This is the only way we all get to be happy. Sadly, these geniuses are few. What is good is that Indian cinema seems to have two latest examples- Anurag Basu and Anurag Kashyap.

Look at him smile. That talented bastard.

The theatrical of Barfi! was literally jaw dropping. I couldn’t help but admit that it belonged to international standards and no less. So, my expectations for the movie piled up, the factors being- the impressive cast, the experimental director and the big production values. Finally the time came when was finally sitting in the hall, waiting for the movie to start. After various jewellery commercials and well-timed theatrical teasers, the UTV montage finally made its appearance. The next thing that usually comes up is the silent and boring presentation of brand logos and media partners. But for the first time in my life I was happy and laughing my ass off during the logo presentation. Why? Because I was listening to an innovative idea of a song that told me what to expect from the movie. Before the actors came on screen, hell, even before the film title came on screen; the movie had won people’s hearts and a hard earned applause. The song is called “picture shuru” (the picture begins), which set the mood for the movie and as fellow movie buffs would agree, it celebrated the idea of watching movies in cinema halls. You won’t enjoy that moment on DVD or cam-prints, trust me.

Barfi! tells the story of a bubbly guy residing in Darjeeling. He is deaf and dumb, but definitely not dumb. He understands life more than we do. His disability gives him an opportunity to live life in silence and peace, to contemplate how he wants to live his life. The character makes us people feel stupid. Do we really need to talk so much? Do we really need to listen to people’s advices? Won’t life be much better the other way around, his way? Eyes speak a language more profound and in that manner, Barfi is a very talkative guy. And what happens when a guy like that falls in love? A wonderful experience of a movie, that’s what happens!

You have complaints? Well he can't hear them. (Yeah, we went there)

There were risks involved here- A non-linear screenplay, a Bollywood film-star acting deaf and dumb and one of the sexiest showgirls of the industry, acting autistic and not surrendering to item numbers. But they pulled it off. Why? Because they wanted to tell a simple story and you don’t really have to dance naked to do that.

The week after watching Barfi was spent enjoying the hangover, which also included listening to Pritam’s music, but then it was obviously not his, so I can forgive myself for that. It was then that a video went viral, accusing Barfi! of plagiarism and proving it. It was evident that Barfi! had incorporated scenes from Charlie Chaplin flicks and a few Korean movies. The video broke my heart. Not that I didn’t know those scenes were from Charlie Chaplin movies, just that the Indian audience is not prone to the concept of references in movies. And even if I believe that the scenes were "copied", I have to credit the movie for being so touching and moving. Surely, you cannot say the performances were plagiarized.

CNN. Reporting the Iraq war in a biased manner, asking reasonable questions about Indian cinema.

It’s been sometime since its release now. The Indian board has selected the movie for the foreign film category of the Oscars. And that is where the problem starts. The films running in competition were some regional films and mainstream Bollywood films, Kahaani, Gangs of Wasseypur and Heroine (why?!). Marketing helps. It provides a better chance for a movie to be taken seriously by the jury. So when you have good big budget movies, just because they earned well and were marketed better, they are preferred over the regional films, which are most of the times better. Makes sense to me. We are being realistic here.

Let us start with Kahaani. Supported by a terrific performance of the ever-awesome Vidya Balan, It was a first-rate thriller. But was it a great film? No. It was the kind of film which will be and should be the staple diet of Indian film goers in the near future. Genre-based films hardly make it that far and above in India, so that’s what the film needs to be applauded for.

Now let us talk about Fashion, oops Heroine. And let us end it here. (What? It was just another seasonal dose of Bhandarkar’s pessimism. Surely you don’t want me to discuss about characterless, weak girls who get caught up in the whirlpool of a deceptive and money-minded showman’s industry, where they have to sleep with people to get their bills paid. Forgive me, but the plot is so new I haven’t done enough homework to discuss it.)

He's going to the bank.

I have always felt that horror and gangster are the genres where you can experiment a lot in areas of technology and making. But when it comes to story, it has all been done. Scorsese, De Palma, Francis Ford Copolla (and even Guy Ritchie) have delivered the most and the best you can get from the genre. Bollywood’s tryst with gangster flicks hasn’t been bad either. Ram Gopal Verma, in the good old days, churned out some really gripping and ahead of its time crime cinema. Be it Satya, Company, Sarkar or even the recent Rakht Charitra for that matter, his cinema has always been about his style and he exploited it to the core. Now he overexploits it just because he’s got the moneys. Then it was Vishal Bhardwaj who rebooted Shakespeare’s Othello as a gangster drama of Hindi cinema. Omkara was a huge hit. Its star-cast, which was more prone to commercial cinema, made the movie famous with both Bollywood and niche audiences.

Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs of Wasseypur is not in the same league. It’s better. Set in a chaotic little town in Bihar, this tale of gangsters has everything that a gangster movie needs- the golden days, the conflict, the violence and of course the swearing of revenge over the killing of a loved one. All this happens in the first half an hour of the movie. Now we are all set to enjoy the stylish slow motions, the making of strategies and the shocking deceptions. (Suddenly you say to your friend, “Wow this is going to be amazing! F*** you, I'm not going outside to buy popcorn! Not now!!”). The shocking deception is that the movie never does any of this. Yes, these bastards swear revenge and they just keep mentioning it every 15 minutes before slumping back into their car seats and driving around the town, looking for random people to kill. And that is the masterstroke.

The characters in Wasseypur are a bunch of losers who are wannabe gangsters. Unlike Puzo’s mafia, this sorry class of criminals is not born with a macabre mindset, but has learnt the notion of style from Amitabh Bachchan movies. Gangs of Wasseypur is a good movie if you look at it from a first timer’s point of view. Let’s go a little deeper. The gangsters here are not educated, they have nothing to do but satisfy their lust for violence and sex. Their family members are more concerned about the sitcoms based on family drama set in rich households: where women burdened with jewels walk around the house, hunting for trouble, which may sometimes be as grave as cold milk served to their husband by their daughter in law (who by the way is always dressed in an impeccable attire when it comes to serving breakfast to jobless people. Some family…) Anyway, I don’t want to go all Nolan in this article, fiction-in-a-fiction shit. Hey, what about the revenge? Yes, it is there in the back of their minds. Someday, when the opportune moment presents itself, they will take care of it.

There are different reasons for people loving a movie. For example, I doubt Barfi! is a success for its story, direction and depth of performances. No, I think its winning all that money because Ranbir Kapoor’s in it. Put a newcomer in his role and you would have never seen the movie climb the stairs of success, from the box office’s point of view. And it is the same for  Gangs of Wasseypur, people are loving the movie because it got a standing ovation in Cannes. Why did it get that ovation? That’s the real reason to love the movie.

Gangs of Wasseypur is full of humor. There is one whole chase sequence consisting of an intense dialogue about fruits. It could have been a stupid moment in a serious movie, but hey when something like this happens, it is not a serious movie. It’s based on real events and this shit is so damn real! I can imagine myself in that chase sequence, contributing my share of knowledge… about fruits. In another breathtaking chase sequence, we see a fat man in hot pursuit of a guy who just attempted to kill the fat man’s friend. This pursuit is carried out by sitting on a dilapidated, poor scooter. Then the chaser and the chasee both run out of fuel in their vehicles and the next moment they are both refuelling at the petrol pump, just looking at each other while their poor vehicles take rest. Isn’t that just hilarious? If not, wait till you watch it. And do watch it.

Two-wheeler sales have been down, Kashyap wants to give the market a boost.

Gangs of Wasseypur talks about revenge in a very real manner. People in this movie have no other motive but revenge. And that is their only motive of life, because they are good-for-nothing fellows, whiling away their time in a town that’s poor and undeveloped because it has given up to the whims of violent people with stolen money. Revenge is the protagonists’ ultimate motive and they would have nothing to do after that. Therefore it has to happen later.

The 5 hour epic saga is about people who can be called plain stupid by us educated lot. But what are we measuring them against? Against us? Do they even exist in the same world? They did. And they were not gun toting stylish mafia of the north, but a pitiful lot who drowned in their own stupidity, pulling down with them, a whole world of their own…  a world full of twisted ideologies about ethics, family and Bollywood.

Gangs of Wasseypur is not a better movie than Barfi! It’s a more distracted one. It is a more stupid one. It has far too many characters than it can handle. It has a screenplay that doesn’t satisfy its plot. And it is about people who don’t look remotely beautiful and as for their thinking it is far from beautiful. But I think that it would have been an ideal choice for the Oscars. Why? Because it’s more Indian than Barfi! is (I am not talking about plagiarism here). Gangs of Wasseypur is not a better movie than Barfi! It is just as good. But when it comes to a jury that looks at foreign films, Barfi! could be a film about anywhere. But Gangs of Wasseypur can only happen here in India, amidst its crooked politics and the mass psychology that is ignored. The film plays as a gangster movie, works as a family drama (also a comedy at times) and leaves you with anger in your heart, that you are too cheap for this world because there are just too many like you trying to ruin it. Simple economics.

Finally, it is common sense that if the Cannes jury appreciated it by giving it a standing ovation, surely the Oscar jury was also looking forward to watching Gangs of Wasseypur. But no, we had to take a chance. Now let us hope that they will forget India’s old friendship with plagiarism and treat them scenes as intelligent references. Highly unlikely? Cheers!

I pray to Morgan Freeman.

But then we all have a different way of looking at stuff. There will be many of you who might despise the film right from the beginning and shut it off in the first 20 minutes. That’s because you hated its character, its personality. Well, at least it has one. A good film must be judged on the basis of that. I could never watch Anurag Kashyap’s Dev-D in one go. Rather I think the movie is a pain. But I admire the movie for it never wanted to be anything else but that. It was supposed to act as a hangover, as guilt for the wrongs you committed, the medium was an old flawed character called Devdas.

The Indian audience has to do more than just criticizing the run-off-the-mill contemporary material that sucks to the core. We decide if we are intelligent enough to avoid films like Rowdy Rathore. Why then do we settle to watch it, just because there’s Akshay Kumar in it? Why do we go and watch Tees Maar Khan, for its item number “Sheila ki jawaani”? You see even if you criticize the movie, you do it after watching it. The producers are still earning their money back. They will make another piece of crap for you to analyze. You will pay them to analyze it. Analyze that. We pay the same amount of money for both Rowdy Rathore and Barfi!, then why do we get different levels of satisfaction out of them?

Admittedly, Akhsay Kumar would look funnier doing that.

Maybe, we are too busy earning our money, so we don’t give much of a damn while spending it on a no-brainer, thus wasting it. Settling to watch a bad movie for an item number is like buying a car with good seat covers but no steering wheel.

Killing Them Softly (2012)

I have always been keen to watch movies, good ones or much awaited ones, on the very first day of their release. I like to watch the very first show. I give myself a false sense of superiority and gain some enjoyment seeing a film before anyone else. Sometimes not only do I get to experience the pleasure of watching the film before others, but I also get to tell the ones who didn't show much interest to begin with that there was a film they could watch. A good film. A film to look out for. This is one of those films.

A quick plot review makes it sound like one of the many post-Scorsese gangster tales which involve a lot of well written moderately profound dialogue and some stylized violence. Here's the IMDB blurb Jackie Cogan is a professional enforcer who investigates a heist that went down during a mob-protected poker game. 

I went in expecting a heist gone wrong. I expected Brad Pitt to be the stone cold ruthless assassin type, great for action sequences imparting wisdom in forty words and two pop culture references. I expected Ray Liotta to be a mob boss getting riled up and spitting out his words at the camera.

A few of my wishes came true. What I truly witnessed was an allegorical tale of the recession. An economy supported by gambling breaks down. Troops are sent in to rectify the situation and bring the economy back to its feet. But the troops aren't as effective as expected. Beneath a layer of cool criminal speak lies an essay on America and the events that unfolded during the time period of the 2008 presidential campaigns.

What enhances the film and its core idea are the writing, the direction and the cinematography. The cinematography is superb. I wouldn't be surprised if the cinematographer got a nod come Oscar season.  A few scenes stand out in my head; a character injects himself with heroin, a character gets shot. The writing and the direction are intelligent and well paced. The acting is top notch. Brad Pitt is stellar as usual and Scoot McNairy gives an authentic performance.

I had one complaint. I greatly admire the use of allegory in film. But sometimes the allegorical elements are too blunt. District 9 was subtle with its references to apartheid. This film is just too ham fisted with the direction at a few points. The allegory is not there for us to pick up. It's hammered home, repeatedly. And that ticks me off, a little.

All in all a good film. One of the better ones of this year. The film  has the potential to remain a good film or to be hyped as a great film as it deals with issues close to America (remember The Hurt Locker? Neither do I).

IMDB Rating: 7.3/10

My Rating: 7.5/10

Watch it in the theater? Yeah, it's good.