OPM*
Presents - Jaan-E-Mann - Geometry Fail :(
Love triangles can be complicated. Especially if you failed geometry in school.
Indian film makers, for long, have relied on love triangles to give them story angles. It is rarely though that film makers have attempted anything more complicated.
For example, the love quadrilateral or the love polygon. Or the severely interesting, Love Pyramid, where the object of love is at the top and everyone else is at the bottom. The top of the pyramid is usually inhabited by women of breathtaking beauty who do not necessarily suffer from asthma. Examples include Greta Garbo, and closer home, divas like Madhubala. These people are at no disadvantage even if they are geometrically challenged.
At the bottom of the pyramid though, it is a very different story. The bottom is usually inhabited by men of negligible or no character. Examples include but are not limited to Me. The big problem with being at the bottom of the pyramid is that, like Tutankhamen, one is usually dead. (Proven by the fact that I am, almost always, a dead bore)
There are several interestingly geometric love plots which are rare and enthralling. One, which is found only in America, is called the Love Pentagon. It is a big secret and is kept undercover most of the time except once when Bill and Monica visited.
If it is difficult for film makers to come up with complicated love geometry, it is just as bad for characters stuck in straightforward love triangles. This is because one has to know whether one has the right-angle on the triangle and since Pythagoras is dead there is no longer any hypoteNews to explain it.
All these struggles are well documented in tomorrow’s release Jaan-e-mann.
Jaan-E-Mann is, obviously, about three people. It starts off ten years in the past on a college campus.
Salman plays Jaan, a 40 year old man masquerading as a college student. He is losing hair and has developed a fetish for rock-star hairstyles. Hence the masquerading, to enable wearing wigs. As a college student who has 40 years of life experience he has several advantages over his 20 year old peers. For one, he has watched far more sitcoms and knows many more jokes. This makes him a great hit with the girls in college.
Akshay plays Mann, an 18 year old genius with dreams of being a mover and shaker on the stock exchange someday and a really bad haircut. He comes from a lower middle class background and having been deprived of basic necessities in life like Cable Tv, he has never watched any ‘Friends’ or ‘Will and Grace’. As a result, he knows no jokes at all and hence gets flustered every time he meets a girl, which fortunately is only twice(once a mannequin and the other a rajasthani puppet)
Preity Zinta plays E, the youngest of 5 siblings. Her 4 older sisters, A, B, C and D are played by relatively unknown actors who do not even know the basic alphabet of acting. Since the movie begins in the period when the Internet Revolution started in India, email, e-commerce and E become the craze of the college.
Both Jaan and Mann have email ids but pass out (of college) before they can express their love for E(to her, not to each other)
Ten years later, in the present day, things have changed. Broadband rates have, happily, hit a new low.
E has a completely new wardrobe. Mann is a successful stock-broker and has a 300 dollar haircut. Jaan has a nine year old son, Naan, and has had hair-weaving done. Anupam Kher does a brilliant job as Jaan’s son Naan and is instrumental in bringing our protagonists together again thus:
Naan: How are babies born??
Jaan: Errr… Storks deliver them at the doorstep…
Naan: I want to go to the Stock Exchange NOW!! Waaaahhh!!
Jaan and son make their way to the Stock Market as Mann walks down from his cabin to grab a vada-pav for lunch. E happens to be at the stock market for reasons known only to the scriptwriter. Ten years after they last met; our lead characters meet each other again in a stock Yash Raj movie scene.
Its fireworks all over again for Jaan and Mann, but mostly because it is Diwali. Jaan, to keep his chances of dating E alive, claims that Naan is only his dwarf friend. Mann, who hasn’t watched any sitcoms yet, doesn’t say anything at all. Naan thinks E is a stork and proceeds to try to pluck some feathers. Jaan explains this act by saying that Naan is a dwarf who plays a clown in Boris Karloff’s circus. At the mention of a clown, E runs away screaming her name over and over again. It turns out that she is coulrophobic.
What follows is an entertaining tragi-comedy of errors that can only be watched, not described in words. This was the reason they worked without a script in the first place!
As a tribute to geometric genius through the ages, here is a conundrum for you folks: There are two kinds of lines. One is the straight line. Which is the other kind of line?
* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.
Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.
**OPM appears in the Thursday edition of Bangalore BIAS and previews a Friday release
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Saturday, October 14, 2006
12 Oct 2006 - Don, The Chase Begins
OPM*
Presents - Don (‘t) do that!
Remakes are the order of the day. They are even remaking poems. William Blake’s wry observation on the meaning of life, which goes: “Little Fly, thy summers play, My thoughtless hand, has brushed away” has been remade into an observation of party hopping nightmares:
Your Little Fly
Is open hey!!
Is your thoughtless hand, on holiday?
Yes, so remakes are the order of the day (including this sentence). People are remaking everything from songs to Tarla Dalal’s cooking to movies. I even remade the coffee that I botched up this morning!
The thing with the business of remaking is that one has to start at the beginning. Sometimes even before the beginning, in the past.
This makes remaking a movie a very difficult thing to do involving several precursors to filming. Chief among these is that one has to first, watch the original. This can be pretty annoying especially if you are looking to remake movies like YHTKH, HKSKN or James (sitting through one entire showing of such movies usually ensures that the thought of remaking is quickly rethought and disinfected)
Even if a filmmaker zeroes in on a yesteryear-hit things can go severely wrong at the scripting stage. Today, we will look at some of the pitfalls that the makers of the new Don faced.
In the 28 years that have followed the release of the original Don the Average Indian Height has gone up by about 2 inches (according to statistics provided by Indian Trouser Manufacturers). The new Don though, is shorter by about 6 inches. This is rather unfortunate and makes it very difficult for the filmmaker to show him as a larger than life character (smaller than life heroes don’t work in regular Bollywood fare).
They decided, hence, to set the new movie in Malaysia, where height statistics make our protagonist suitably larger than life.
This done they set out making changes to the script, where necessary and otherwise.
For starters, all the female characters would wear shorter clothes than in the original since they were Indian women of average Indian height, who did their shopping in Malaysia. Also Roma was renamed Aroma, to give her character a unique oriental flavour resulting in metaphysical moments like:
Don: (as he looks for spare bullets, during a gunfight) I can’t find anything! What is this, Aroma?!!!?
Aroma: Oh, that is just the smell of gunpowder
and
Don: (appreciating the wine tasting class that Aroma has enrolled him in) : Oh, Aroma!
Aroma: No! You need to taste the wine, not smell it
The original character Jasjit, had to be rewritten too since there are no careers left for Circus high wire walkers in the absence of all circuses except Navjot Piddhu, in the present day. So the new Jas-jit is a JIT consultant (a Japanese management philosophy which gave the world the farcical face-saving technique of the Just-In-Time marriage) with fake degrees, who gets injured when a huge wedge falls on his foot. After this huge wedgie, he has a permanent limp (which is understandable if you went to the same school as I did).
Moving the story 28 years ahead while retaining its original appeal meant giving the characters a retro look and retaining some original songs.
A great deal of planning and detailing was done on the new version of ‘Khaike pan’ that essentially involved finding a blue shirt with floral prints.
Also, Don, since he is a Malaysia based underworld don, and not a regular white-collar office-goer wears his tie inside his shirt. Thankfully they decided not to do a superman with his innerwear.
All this was done at a huge cost to the makers (as well as the audience).
True to the contemporary setting, the new Don is very gadget-friendly and always carries an iPod and a cool new Blackberry, which make him painfully slow during fight sequences, as he is worried about damaging them. Gadgets also provide fodder for conversation and light moments especially when Malik continuously mistakes ‘pass me some black berries’ for ‘pass me the Blackberry’.
The biggest script challenge was to ensure that none of the present characters ever watched any Indian TV in case they saw reruns of the original Don and hence figured out what happened next. This was an additional reason to set the movie in Malaysia where there are only 3 porn channels (including a news channel called Hot News and a sports channel called Water)
The basic plot remains the same except that they decided not to bump off the actual Don, retaining him in captivity, much like his Versace ties. The masterstroke is the Promo, which shows Don with his face enveloped in smoke, in spite of the ban against depicting cigarette smoking onscreen. This was achieved by shooting in really cloudy conditions in Ooty.
It is easy to see that the biggest movie of 2006, DON is a high-methane, twisted roller-coaster ride, with just the right dose of clamour, action, suspense, romance and rerun quality.
Of course, they called it Don-The Chase Begins only because they were hurrying to catch the October 20th Diwali release.
* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.
Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.
**OPM appears in the Thursday edition of Bangalore BIAS and previews a Friday release
Presents - Don (‘t) do that!
Remakes are the order of the day. They are even remaking poems. William Blake’s wry observation on the meaning of life, which goes: “Little Fly, thy summers play, My thoughtless hand, has brushed away” has been remade into an observation of party hopping nightmares:
Your Little Fly
Is open hey!!
Is your thoughtless hand, on holiday?
Yes, so remakes are the order of the day (including this sentence). People are remaking everything from songs to Tarla Dalal’s cooking to movies. I even remade the coffee that I botched up this morning!
The thing with the business of remaking is that one has to start at the beginning. Sometimes even before the beginning, in the past.
This makes remaking a movie a very difficult thing to do involving several precursors to filming. Chief among these is that one has to first, watch the original. This can be pretty annoying especially if you are looking to remake movies like YHTKH, HKSKN or James (sitting through one entire showing of such movies usually ensures that the thought of remaking is quickly rethought and disinfected)
Even if a filmmaker zeroes in on a yesteryear-hit things can go severely wrong at the scripting stage. Today, we will look at some of the pitfalls that the makers of the new Don faced.
In the 28 years that have followed the release of the original Don the Average Indian Height has gone up by about 2 inches (according to statistics provided by Indian Trouser Manufacturers). The new Don though, is shorter by about 6 inches. This is rather unfortunate and makes it very difficult for the filmmaker to show him as a larger than life character (smaller than life heroes don’t work in regular Bollywood fare).
They decided, hence, to set the new movie in Malaysia, where height statistics make our protagonist suitably larger than life.
This done they set out making changes to the script, where necessary and otherwise.
For starters, all the female characters would wear shorter clothes than in the original since they were Indian women of average Indian height, who did their shopping in Malaysia. Also Roma was renamed Aroma, to give her character a unique oriental flavour resulting in metaphysical moments like:
Don: (as he looks for spare bullets, during a gunfight) I can’t find anything! What is this, Aroma?!!!?
Aroma: Oh, that is just the smell of gunpowder
and
Don: (appreciating the wine tasting class that Aroma has enrolled him in) : Oh, Aroma!
Aroma: No! You need to taste the wine, not smell it
The original character Jasjit, had to be rewritten too since there are no careers left for Circus high wire walkers in the absence of all circuses except Navjot Piddhu, in the present day. So the new Jas-jit is a JIT consultant (a Japanese management philosophy which gave the world the farcical face-saving technique of the Just-In-Time marriage) with fake degrees, who gets injured when a huge wedge falls on his foot. After this huge wedgie, he has a permanent limp (which is understandable if you went to the same school as I did).
Moving the story 28 years ahead while retaining its original appeal meant giving the characters a retro look and retaining some original songs.
A great deal of planning and detailing was done on the new version of ‘Khaike pan’ that essentially involved finding a blue shirt with floral prints.
Also, Don, since he is a Malaysia based underworld don, and not a regular white-collar office-goer wears his tie inside his shirt. Thankfully they decided not to do a superman with his innerwear.
All this was done at a huge cost to the makers (as well as the audience).
True to the contemporary setting, the new Don is very gadget-friendly and always carries an iPod and a cool new Blackberry, which make him painfully slow during fight sequences, as he is worried about damaging them. Gadgets also provide fodder for conversation and light moments especially when Malik continuously mistakes ‘pass me some black berries’ for ‘pass me the Blackberry’.
The biggest script challenge was to ensure that none of the present characters ever watched any Indian TV in case they saw reruns of the original Don and hence figured out what happened next. This was an additional reason to set the movie in Malaysia where there are only 3 porn channels (including a news channel called Hot News and a sports channel called Water)
The basic plot remains the same except that they decided not to bump off the actual Don, retaining him in captivity, much like his Versace ties. The masterstroke is the Promo, which shows Don with his face enveloped in smoke, in spite of the ban against depicting cigarette smoking onscreen. This was achieved by shooting in really cloudy conditions in Ooty.
It is easy to see that the biggest movie of 2006, DON is a high-methane, twisted roller-coaster ride, with just the right dose of clamour, action, suspense, romance and rerun quality.
Of course, they called it Don-The Chase Begins only because they were hurrying to catch the October 20th Diwali release.
* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.
Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.
**OPM appears in the Thursday edition of Bangalore BIAS and previews a Friday release
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
5 Oct 2006 - Zindaggi Rocks
OPM*
Presents - Zindagi Rock Bottom
The thing with most women is that they love their jewellery. Not only their own, but also all the stuff in jewellery stores.
This is a problem for the post-metrosexual man who marries/dates this kind of woman, who, it turns out, is every woman but Condoleeza Rice. Now, obviously, since women like jewellery so much it must be plenty likable. A race that makes the world go round, one that treats animals and men with so much care and compassion can scarcely be off the mark.
But for the men who these women condescend to date and/or live with, Jewellery is a big conundrum. One theory that is going around is that Jewellery was invented shortly after the invention of Marriage. This was because after the first few years of marriage men, invariably, ran out of gifting ideas on anniversaries, birthdays, makeup days, make out days etc. Women, at this stage helped men out by inventing Jewellery.
There is another theory making the rounds, which claims that Marriage itself was invented by women to be able to invent Jewellery later. This rings true when you realize that women wouldn’t be marrying just to stay with us men. Especially me.
Zindagi Rocks, a movie that explores the tragic obsession of one woman with Diamonds, answers none of my questions on jewellery, even partially.
Sushmita plays Kria, a Magnificent Woman and a singer who sings for a travelling circus, and is billed only next to Crudus, the Entertaining Clown. Her other colleagues include her brother Karam, the Phenomenal Talent and Loin, a Great Animal Trainer.
The circus is run by a failed Ad agency copywriter with a flair for the descriptive who calls himself Mahesh Batt, the Former Copywriter.
The film begins with a glorious, soprano-like rendition of ‘Diamonds are a girl’s best friend’ by Kria, a sequence further enhanced as she sings while performing a complicated trapeze act that involves her stunt double and some standard issue trapeze equipment.
She ends the song on a high octave landing on the net with a flourish. The audience erupts, but this is primarily because the circus elephant is on the loose and there is pandemonium in the paying public. Everything settles down when people realize that it is only a baby elephant that is on the loose. However, when Loin, a Great Animal Trainer performs his act with lion cubs, there is pandemonium in the paying public again and they start demanding a refund. Everything settles down again as Crudus, the Entertaining Clown performs a crude and hilarious version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. This act includes several very sad jokes in poor taste like “when in Rome, do a Romeo”. The paying public enjoy the act hugely mainly on account of the fact that Crudus has forgotten his pants.
At the finale, Kria performs ‘Diamonds are a girl’s best friend’ again, to much outrage among the paying public.
This happens throughout the season (precisely 3 days) and we begin to realize that Kria is obsessed with the ‘Diamonds’ song. We also realize that Crudus never forgets his pants, he just doesn’t have any!
In the audience every night is Shiny, a man who has won seasons tickets to the circus. He is to be Kria’s Knight in Shining Armour and everyone is pretty disappointed when he is never shown in anything but Corduroys. Shiny, a budding psychologist, has done world famous research in trying to answer questions concerning jewellery that include but are not limited to:
-Why aren’t American diamonds satisfactory when only a trained jeweller can tell the difference?
-Why is Platinum so expensive when it looks like steel?
-Why is White Gold?
At the end of the season, i.e. the third show, Kria breaks down after yet another rendition of Marilyn Monroe’s ‘Diamonds’. Shiny rushes to her side and becomes her Shrink (mainly because he’s not been getting his daily dose of viagra). She is taken to his clinic, where, as she rests on the couch, she is very keen to know where he bought the very comfortable couch.
After much discussion on jewellery and the 1953 Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell movie, “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”, the solution to her problem strikes Shiny while he is fiddling with his iPod.
He realizes that Kria is not mentally ill. Nor is she obsessed with rocks of any kind, including diamonds. Her problem is that she only knows ONE song.
Everything ends well when he buys her the new Microsoft Zoon and gifts her several disks of pirated music.
* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.
Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.
**OPM appears in the Thursday edition of Bangalore BIAS and previews a Friday release
Presents - Zindagi Rock Bottom
The thing with most women is that they love their jewellery. Not only their own, but also all the stuff in jewellery stores.
This is a problem for the post-metrosexual man who marries/dates this kind of woman, who, it turns out, is every woman but Condoleeza Rice. Now, obviously, since women like jewellery so much it must be plenty likable. A race that makes the world go round, one that treats animals and men with so much care and compassion can scarcely be off the mark.
But for the men who these women condescend to date and/or live with, Jewellery is a big conundrum. One theory that is going around is that Jewellery was invented shortly after the invention of Marriage. This was because after the first few years of marriage men, invariably, ran out of gifting ideas on anniversaries, birthdays, makeup days, make out days etc. Women, at this stage helped men out by inventing Jewellery.
There is another theory making the rounds, which claims that Marriage itself was invented by women to be able to invent Jewellery later. This rings true when you realize that women wouldn’t be marrying just to stay with us men. Especially me.
Zindagi Rocks, a movie that explores the tragic obsession of one woman with Diamonds, answers none of my questions on jewellery, even partially.
Sushmita plays Kria, a Magnificent Woman and a singer who sings for a travelling circus, and is billed only next to Crudus, the Entertaining Clown. Her other colleagues include her brother Karam, the Phenomenal Talent and Loin, a Great Animal Trainer.
The circus is run by a failed Ad agency copywriter with a flair for the descriptive who calls himself Mahesh Batt, the Former Copywriter.
The film begins with a glorious, soprano-like rendition of ‘Diamonds are a girl’s best friend’ by Kria, a sequence further enhanced as she sings while performing a complicated trapeze act that involves her stunt double and some standard issue trapeze equipment.
She ends the song on a high octave landing on the net with a flourish. The audience erupts, but this is primarily because the circus elephant is on the loose and there is pandemonium in the paying public. Everything settles down when people realize that it is only a baby elephant that is on the loose. However, when Loin, a Great Animal Trainer performs his act with lion cubs, there is pandemonium in the paying public again and they start demanding a refund. Everything settles down again as Crudus, the Entertaining Clown performs a crude and hilarious version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. This act includes several very sad jokes in poor taste like “when in Rome, do a Romeo”. The paying public enjoy the act hugely mainly on account of the fact that Crudus has forgotten his pants.
At the finale, Kria performs ‘Diamonds are a girl’s best friend’ again, to much outrage among the paying public.
This happens throughout the season (precisely 3 days) and we begin to realize that Kria is obsessed with the ‘Diamonds’ song. We also realize that Crudus never forgets his pants, he just doesn’t have any!
In the audience every night is Shiny, a man who has won seasons tickets to the circus. He is to be Kria’s Knight in Shining Armour and everyone is pretty disappointed when he is never shown in anything but Corduroys. Shiny, a budding psychologist, has done world famous research in trying to answer questions concerning jewellery that include but are not limited to:
-Why aren’t American diamonds satisfactory when only a trained jeweller can tell the difference?
-Why is Platinum so expensive when it looks like steel?
-Why is White Gold?
At the end of the season, i.e. the third show, Kria breaks down after yet another rendition of Marilyn Monroe’s ‘Diamonds’. Shiny rushes to her side and becomes her Shrink (mainly because he’s not been getting his daily dose of viagra). She is taken to his clinic, where, as she rests on the couch, she is very keen to know where he bought the very comfortable couch.
After much discussion on jewellery and the 1953 Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell movie, “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”, the solution to her problem strikes Shiny while he is fiddling with his iPod.
He realizes that Kria is not mentally ill. Nor is she obsessed with rocks of any kind, including diamonds. Her problem is that she only knows ONE song.
Everything ends well when he buys her the new Microsoft Zoon and gifts her several disks of pirated music.
* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.
Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.
**OPM appears in the Thursday edition of Bangalore BIAS and previews a Friday release
28 Sept 2006 - John Tucker Must Die
OPM*
Presents - John Tucker comes Unstuck
I envy people. No, not all people. But people who eat junk food all their life and then develop a negligible potbelly when they turn 45.
It just isn’t fair! These people never get their just desserts! They just keep having as many desserts as they want.
I, on the other hand, have lived my life in the fear of that extra kilo. I’ve dined on Atkins, supped on the GM diet, run a couple of half marathons and am still about 8 kilos overweight.
People like me, to pace our wardrobes to our waistlines, continue spending small fortunes every year. We have believed, for unreasonable amounts of time, that the Slim Sauna Belt is worthy of Design awards. (This is usually the amount of time it takes to call the sales line, tell a bewildered sales person that you would actually like to order the belt, assure him it isn’t a prank call, receive the product and open the packaging to find that it isn’t that design-hot. The pain is worse when you realize that even though they call it the slim-sauna you cant really use it as a belt for your pants as they haven’t made belt loops that large as yet)
Us, obesity-prone yahoos, have also realized that gym is called gym because it is for gymnasts and athletes and all those people who keep sportswear companies going. We are always going to be the fat ones chugging away at the treadmill and providing encouragement to thinner and fitter people, much in the way George Bush provides mirth to all.
It is for us that they invented liposuction. Nobody knows why it is called “Lipo-suction” though. They understand the suction part, but no one has dope on what ‘Lipo’ is. Lipo rhymes with Hippo, come to think of it.
We have followed studies in vague magazines like Vogue about how Weight watchers in USA have more success at watching their weight than people in India and other Commonwealth countries.
All the assorted mysteries that intrepid obese explorers have been trying to unravel are cleared up in this weeks release “John Tucker Must Die”.
John Tucker is the world’s most famous liposuction expert. Hence the name, John Tucker. He is also a handsome man with jet-black hair who claims to be only 29 years old. No one believes him and there is a cry in social circles that John Tucker Must Dye (his hair).
As a liposuction expert, he has built a huge fortune thinning down wealthy obese clients including Paris Hiltown, her Chihuahua, and Fatboy Slim, the rap artist.
Fat people flock to him much like huge herds of flying elephants, as his liposuction procedure, remarkably, leaves people with great skin and a great basal metabolic rate.
There are rumours though that he sells all the fat he accumulates, mining his celebrity clients, for huge sums on online ecommerce sites for the celebrity crazy. The CIA and the IRS want him to come clean, else his fat is on the fire.
The story arc goes on to show how John Tucker, with the help of his three girlfriends, Tomie, Dickie and Harini, clears up his name by showing that he has never performed liposuction. In an almost famous court scene he says:
Tucker: All I know about Liposuction, is that Lipo derives its name from the old Latin word for “The Head”, i.e. The Lipo of the family, Julius Caesar.
I’m only a gym instructor with 7 anaesthetist credits at Medical school. I have never given Lipo. (He gets warned for using bad language in court for this)
All I do is anaesthetize my clients and wrap them up in my Giant Sauna Belt for about 3 days. It really works. Call 800 200 9898 today! (He gets warned for using marketing language in court for this)
It all ends happily when NASA cancels 17 space missions to commission 3 Giant Sauna Belts instead.
Somewhere in the subtext was hidden for me the answer to why Weight Watchers in USA do better than their Commonwealth counterparts. In USA they watch the pounds. We are watching the Kilos, damn it!
For actual dope on Liposuction go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liposuction
* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.
Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.
Presents - John Tucker comes Unstuck
I envy people. No, not all people. But people who eat junk food all their life and then develop a negligible potbelly when they turn 45.
It just isn’t fair! These people never get their just desserts! They just keep having as many desserts as they want.
I, on the other hand, have lived my life in the fear of that extra kilo. I’ve dined on Atkins, supped on the GM diet, run a couple of half marathons and am still about 8 kilos overweight.
People like me, to pace our wardrobes to our waistlines, continue spending small fortunes every year. We have believed, for unreasonable amounts of time, that the Slim Sauna Belt is worthy of Design awards. (This is usually the amount of time it takes to call the sales line, tell a bewildered sales person that you would actually like to order the belt, assure him it isn’t a prank call, receive the product and open the packaging to find that it isn’t that design-hot. The pain is worse when you realize that even though they call it the slim-sauna you cant really use it as a belt for your pants as they haven’t made belt loops that large as yet)
Us, obesity-prone yahoos, have also realized that gym is called gym because it is for gymnasts and athletes and all those people who keep sportswear companies going. We are always going to be the fat ones chugging away at the treadmill and providing encouragement to thinner and fitter people, much in the way George Bush provides mirth to all.
It is for us that they invented liposuction. Nobody knows why it is called “Lipo-suction” though. They understand the suction part, but no one has dope on what ‘Lipo’ is. Lipo rhymes with Hippo, come to think of it.
We have followed studies in vague magazines like Vogue about how Weight watchers in USA have more success at watching their weight than people in India and other Commonwealth countries.
All the assorted mysteries that intrepid obese explorers have been trying to unravel are cleared up in this weeks release “John Tucker Must Die”.
John Tucker is the world’s most famous liposuction expert. Hence the name, John Tucker. He is also a handsome man with jet-black hair who claims to be only 29 years old. No one believes him and there is a cry in social circles that John Tucker Must Dye (his hair).
As a liposuction expert, he has built a huge fortune thinning down wealthy obese clients including Paris Hiltown, her Chihuahua, and Fatboy Slim, the rap artist.
Fat people flock to him much like huge herds of flying elephants, as his liposuction procedure, remarkably, leaves people with great skin and a great basal metabolic rate.
There are rumours though that he sells all the fat he accumulates, mining his celebrity clients, for huge sums on online ecommerce sites for the celebrity crazy. The CIA and the IRS want him to come clean, else his fat is on the fire.
The story arc goes on to show how John Tucker, with the help of his three girlfriends, Tomie, Dickie and Harini, clears up his name by showing that he has never performed liposuction. In an almost famous court scene he says:
Tucker: All I know about Liposuction, is that Lipo derives its name from the old Latin word for “The Head”, i.e. The Lipo of the family, Julius Caesar.
I’m only a gym instructor with 7 anaesthetist credits at Medical school. I have never given Lipo. (He gets warned for using bad language in court for this)
All I do is anaesthetize my clients and wrap them up in my Giant Sauna Belt for about 3 days. It really works. Call 800 200 9898 today! (He gets warned for using marketing language in court for this)
It all ends happily when NASA cancels 17 space missions to commission 3 Giant Sauna Belts instead.
Somewhere in the subtext was hidden for me the answer to why Weight Watchers in USA do better than their Commonwealth counterparts. In USA they watch the pounds. We are watching the Kilos, damn it!
For actual dope on Liposuction go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liposuction
* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.
Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.
21 Sept 2006 - Wickerman
OPM*
Presents - Wicker Doors
You know that it would be untrue,
You know that I would be a liar,
If I were to say to you mom,
I couldn’t get much higher
Come on lady, lift me higher
Come on lady, lift me higher
Mommy I really need that lyre
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Lift me higher
Lift me higher yeah yeah
- Little Jim Morrison
Jim Morrison’s father, Morris, who named him Jim Morrison, was a man who married a Gym Instructor. Jim’s mommy was weirder than his father, if you can believe that. She insisted that every desire of little Jim’s would be met if he climbed trees, the taller the better. Jim, whose childhood ambition was to own a lyre and play it after he set fire to his home, just couldn’t climb Rosewood trees as he was in love with a girl named Rose. The lyrics above, were written by Little Jim, as a tribute to his struggle to get a lyre. The poems he wrote about his childhood aspirations formed the basis for the lyrics he wrote for The Doors later in life.
This week’s release is a movie based on these early years of Jim’s life. Since it is only about Jim and not about the band ‘The Doors’ it is aptly called Door.
Oops, or is that Door without an extra o – Dor! I’ve no preview, unfortunately, for Nagesh Kukunoor’s Dor, so we will take a look at what Nicholas Cage’s “The Wickerman”, that releases tomorrow, is about.
Wickertionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1)
wicker /ˈwɪk ər/ Pronunciation Key [wik-er] - A flexible branch or twig of a plant such as willow, used in weaving baskets and furniture
Cage plays a man who owns a furniture store that deals exclusively in Wickerwork. Unfortunately the branches and twigs he’s been getting as raw material are only as flexible as his own facial muscles. This means that he can only make wickerwork curtain rods and walking sticks. The curtains come down on his business soon enough and he decides to experiment with wicker till he finds the best wicker possible. In the course of his experiments he has an accident involving a truckload of wicker and 3 espresso machines.
When he wakes up he finds he can spin webs of wicker a la Spiderman. He jumps off his balcony only to realize that wicker webs don’t stick and is badly hurt. This doesn’t deter him and he becomes a superhero – WickerMan!
To get buzz going he advertises in the personals column offering his services as WickerMan Superhero. This done, he worries about a costume and a secret identity (he has neither but is not naked). As he doesn’t have the body to carry off the innerwear-outside style adopted by so many superheroes, he wears normal clothes bought at the mall.
He begins receiving calls for help, but usually when someone wants a wickerwork sofa mended. In addition to this, he has no friends, as the better-known superheroes are an exclusive set. He has to settle for 2nd and 3rd grade superhero friends like CycleRepairMan, WatchMan, YesMan and ManFriday. They sit in a pub all day in hope that honest citizens will need their help. CycleRepairMan helps a child with his tricycle but that doesn’t really bring them cheer.
Meanwhile, on the Internet, a fat evil nerd called Newman is spreading WickerMan jokes like:
Superman: Lois, I wish I knew my own strength! I can never fix your plumbing without damaging everything.
Lois: I know what we’ll do. Lets call on WeakerMan!
Or
Batman: Vicki, all my underwear is in the laundry. What do I do?
Vicki Vale: I know what we’ll do. Lets call on KnickerMan!
WickerMan, all upset and riled turns neurotic, writing poems like-
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
I’m a schizophrenic,
And so am I.
Finally he decides to invent his own mission. He pretends that he has been called upon to investigate the disappearance of a young girl, Alice, who was last seen next to a rabbit hole. Newman ruins it for him by asking questions on National TV about Lewis Carroll.
WickerMan breaks down and confesses on Oprah, after which, in gratitude, he weaves up a wicker chair for her on the show. All ends well when he is given hundreds of orders on the show and WickerMan becomes a millionaire.
* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.
Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.
Presents - Wicker Doors
You know that it would be untrue,
You know that I would be a liar,
If I were to say to you mom,
I couldn’t get much higher
Come on lady, lift me higher
Come on lady, lift me higher
Mommy I really need that lyre
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Lift me higher
Lift me higher yeah yeah
- Little Jim Morrison
Jim Morrison’s father, Morris, who named him Jim Morrison, was a man who married a Gym Instructor. Jim’s mommy was weirder than his father, if you can believe that. She insisted that every desire of little Jim’s would be met if he climbed trees, the taller the better. Jim, whose childhood ambition was to own a lyre and play it after he set fire to his home, just couldn’t climb Rosewood trees as he was in love with a girl named Rose. The lyrics above, were written by Little Jim, as a tribute to his struggle to get a lyre. The poems he wrote about his childhood aspirations formed the basis for the lyrics he wrote for The Doors later in life.
This week’s release is a movie based on these early years of Jim’s life. Since it is only about Jim and not about the band ‘The Doors’ it is aptly called Door.
Oops, or is that Door without an extra o – Dor! I’ve no preview, unfortunately, for Nagesh Kukunoor’s Dor, so we will take a look at what Nicholas Cage’s “The Wickerman”, that releases tomorrow, is about.
Wickertionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1)
wicker /ˈwɪk ər/ Pronunciation Key [wik-er] - A flexible branch or twig of a plant such as willow, used in weaving baskets and furniture
Cage plays a man who owns a furniture store that deals exclusively in Wickerwork. Unfortunately the branches and twigs he’s been getting as raw material are only as flexible as his own facial muscles. This means that he can only make wickerwork curtain rods and walking sticks. The curtains come down on his business soon enough and he decides to experiment with wicker till he finds the best wicker possible. In the course of his experiments he has an accident involving a truckload of wicker and 3 espresso machines.
When he wakes up he finds he can spin webs of wicker a la Spiderman. He jumps off his balcony only to realize that wicker webs don’t stick and is badly hurt. This doesn’t deter him and he becomes a superhero – WickerMan!
To get buzz going he advertises in the personals column offering his services as WickerMan Superhero. This done, he worries about a costume and a secret identity (he has neither but is not naked). As he doesn’t have the body to carry off the innerwear-outside style adopted by so many superheroes, he wears normal clothes bought at the mall.
He begins receiving calls for help, but usually when someone wants a wickerwork sofa mended. In addition to this, he has no friends, as the better-known superheroes are an exclusive set. He has to settle for 2nd and 3rd grade superhero friends like CycleRepairMan, WatchMan, YesMan and ManFriday. They sit in a pub all day in hope that honest citizens will need their help. CycleRepairMan helps a child with his tricycle but that doesn’t really bring them cheer.
Meanwhile, on the Internet, a fat evil nerd called Newman is spreading WickerMan jokes like:
Superman: Lois, I wish I knew my own strength! I can never fix your plumbing without damaging everything.
Lois: I know what we’ll do. Lets call on WeakerMan!
Or
Batman: Vicki, all my underwear is in the laundry. What do I do?
Vicki Vale: I know what we’ll do. Lets call on KnickerMan!
WickerMan, all upset and riled turns neurotic, writing poems like-
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
I’m a schizophrenic,
And so am I.
Finally he decides to invent his own mission. He pretends that he has been called upon to investigate the disappearance of a young girl, Alice, who was last seen next to a rabbit hole. Newman ruins it for him by asking questions on National TV about Lewis Carroll.
WickerMan breaks down and confesses on Oprah, after which, in gratitude, he weaves up a wicker chair for her on the show. All ends well when he is given hundreds of orders on the show and WickerMan becomes a millionaire.
* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.
Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
