Friday, December 29, 2006
Monday, December 25, 2006
Dec 21 2006 - Happy Feet
OPM*
Presents – Happy Feet OR God knows
When Charles Darwin wrote his ‘On the Origin of Species’, he would have thought it would lead people to rethink notions of creationism and kill legends of lake monsters like the Loch Ness. Instead, almost a hundred and fifty years later, we live in a world that abounds in theories about both.
One such legend is about Penguins; a fictitious species of animal/bird/mammal that live in Antarctica. Antarctica is a fictitious place, which is supposed to be covered in ice as it is at the bottom of the Southern Hemisphere. The Southern Hemisphere, in turn, is not really at the bottom of the world, as the world does not have a bottom at all. This is because the Earth is a ball of rock that circles the sun in a universe where left, right, bottom and top are only points of view. So it doesn’t matter a hoot if one is on the top or the bottom of a pyramid or whether one is on top or bottom during the three-letter word we do so much of. (I mean eat, you sick people!)
Yes, so Antarctica is a fictitious place that no one has actually visited. Since it is below the equator and New Zealand is pretty cold during winter, people have assumed that this fictitious place has a lot of ice since cold air settles on the bottom while hot air rises. (Observed in top b-schools as well. Hot Air usually lands prime consulting jobs)
As opposed to Penguins in Antarctica, fictitious Polar Bears inhabit the fictitious Arctic region at the North Pole (a large proportion of people in Northern Poland are called North Poles too). It is easy to see that Polar Bears and Penguins are improbable since both are supposed to survive on a diet of fish, and fish are improbable in areas covered in ice! As if fish were some kind of easily available SeaBiscuit! These anthropologists must really stop horsing around!
There is another set of environmental yahoos who claim that many ages ago Polar Bears won in the Arctic while the Penguins won in Antarctica. Won the evolutionary war, that is. These Intelligent Design advocates claim that a great battle was waged between the species, where to keep the balance, the Intelligent Designer helped each species win in a different place. Remember that, according to these Intelligent Design proponents, as India is losing a game of cricket, they are wining another elsewhere, as per the grand design of the Intelligent Designer. The wondrous miracles of the Grand Intelligent Designer or GID (pronounced as in 'Gideon' or ‘giddy’ )!! As a side note it must be incredibly boring to be GID on a Saturday evening because he not only knows what programmes are playing on TV but also knows what happens in each one of them.
If there is a GID as most of humanity claims, then he (notice the male chauvinism in this) must have a life very like our own when we produce and create Cartoon films. Characters in cartoon films feel and think like we do, or just like the script we provide them with, as indeed GID in all his omnipresence and omniscience has supposedly given us scripts. It is a wonder then, that ID proponents, instead of claiming that they have figured out the mysteries of Life, the Universe and Obesity by becoming one with, or praying to GID, don’t go a step backward and wonder if GID himself is operating on a script or searching for those answers. But heck, how would I know? GID only knows!
Let us ignore existential questions though, and take a look at tomorrow’s release, Happy Feet, a cartoon film about Penguins and GID.
In the cold fictitious land of Antarctica a bunch of Emperor Penguins are feeling very disenchanted with their circumstance. They are emperors without any subjects. They try going to school and taking on as many subjects as possible, but this does not satisfy them. They go back to their usual habit of hunting down and devouring schools. Schools of fish, that is. Each of these penguins has a special heartsong, which is sung to express love at appropriate social events. These social events are rather drab as many penguins are tone-deaf and none has hands/wings/flaps long enough to clap. What they need is a cultural revolution of sorts. Into this socio-cultural background is born little Mumble who can dance, but cannot sing. He is the greatest tap dancer born to penguin parents, which is not difficult considering that he is also the Only tap dancer born to penguin parents. At parties he is a great hit when he tap dances to everyone’s heartsongs.
This annoys the powers that be and they accuse Mumble of creating the troubles the penguins are having with food supplies, branding his tap dancing evil. Mumble is thus exiled and has to face the fictitious cold of Antarctica alone.
Will he manage to mumble without shivering? Will he find out that the fish supplies are dying out as part of GID’s intelligent design? Will Mumble find GID and wring his neck? Does GID stand for Grand Incompetent Designer, since we live in a bloody incompetently designed world full of silly things like snot, murder, disease and George Bush? I can’t wait to find out tomorrow!
* 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 – Happy Feet OR God knows
When Charles Darwin wrote his ‘On the Origin of Species’, he would have thought it would lead people to rethink notions of creationism and kill legends of lake monsters like the Loch Ness. Instead, almost a hundred and fifty years later, we live in a world that abounds in theories about both.
One such legend is about Penguins; a fictitious species of animal/bird/mammal that live in Antarctica. Antarctica is a fictitious place, which is supposed to be covered in ice as it is at the bottom of the Southern Hemisphere. The Southern Hemisphere, in turn, is not really at the bottom of the world, as the world does not have a bottom at all. This is because the Earth is a ball of rock that circles the sun in a universe where left, right, bottom and top are only points of view. So it doesn’t matter a hoot if one is on the top or the bottom of a pyramid or whether one is on top or bottom during the three-letter word we do so much of. (I mean eat, you sick people!)
Yes, so Antarctica is a fictitious place that no one has actually visited. Since it is below the equator and New Zealand is pretty cold during winter, people have assumed that this fictitious place has a lot of ice since cold air settles on the bottom while hot air rises. (Observed in top b-schools as well. Hot Air usually lands prime consulting jobs)
As opposed to Penguins in Antarctica, fictitious Polar Bears inhabit the fictitious Arctic region at the North Pole (a large proportion of people in Northern Poland are called North Poles too). It is easy to see that Polar Bears and Penguins are improbable since both are supposed to survive on a diet of fish, and fish are improbable in areas covered in ice! As if fish were some kind of easily available SeaBiscuit! These anthropologists must really stop horsing around!
There is another set of environmental yahoos who claim that many ages ago Polar Bears won in the Arctic while the Penguins won in Antarctica. Won the evolutionary war, that is. These Intelligent Design advocates claim that a great battle was waged between the species, where to keep the balance, the Intelligent Designer helped each species win in a different place. Remember that, according to these Intelligent Design proponents, as India is losing a game of cricket, they are wining another elsewhere, as per the grand design of the Intelligent Designer. The wondrous miracles of the Grand Intelligent Designer or GID (pronounced
If there is a GID as most of humanity claims, then he (notice the male chauvinism in this) must have a life very like our own when we produce and create Cartoon films. Characters in cartoon films feel and think like we do, or just like the script we provide them with, as indeed GID in all his omnipresence and omniscience has supposedly given us scripts. It is a wonder then, that ID proponents, instead of claiming that they have figured out the mysteries of Life, the Universe and Obesity by becoming one with, or praying to GID, don’t go a step backward and wonder if GID himself is operating on a script or searching for those answers. But heck, how would I know? GID only knows!
Let us ignore existential questions though, and take a look at tomorrow’s release, Happy Feet, a cartoon film about Penguins and GID.
In the cold fictitious land of Antarctica a bunch of Emperor Penguins are feeling very disenchanted with their circumstance. They are emperors without any subjects. They try going to school and taking on as many subjects as possible, but this does not satisfy them. They go back to their usual habit of hunting down and devouring schools. Schools of fish, that is. Each of these penguins has a special heartsong, which is sung to express love at appropriate social events. These social events are rather drab as many penguins are tone-deaf and none has hands/wings/flaps long enough to clap. What they need is a cultural revolution of sorts. Into this socio-cultural background is born little Mumble who can dance, but cannot sing. He is the greatest tap dancer born to penguin parents, which is not difficult considering that he is also the Only tap dancer born to penguin parents. At parties he is a great hit when he tap dances to everyone’s heartsongs.
This annoys the powers that be and they accuse Mumble of creating the troubles the penguins are having with food supplies, branding his tap dancing evil. Mumble is thus exiled and has to face the fictitious cold of Antarctica alone.
Will he manage to mumble without shivering? Will he find out that the fish supplies are dying out as part of GID’s intelligent design? Will Mumble find GID and wring his neck? Does GID stand for Grand Incompetent Designer, since we live in a bloody incompetently designed world full of silly things like snot, murder, disease and George Bush? I can’t wait to find out tomorrow!
* 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
Friday, December 22, 2006
!
You want to know the only positive fall out of Vote Bank politics in our country?
We have side stepped the creationism/intelligent design versus Science argument over teaching religion in our schools!
We have side stepped the creationism/intelligent design versus Science argument over teaching religion in our schools!
Saturday, December 16, 2006
Dec 14th - Coming Attractions
OPM*
Presents - Coming soon (er or later)
Making movies is a difficult job. Getting a movie released, though, is even more difficult. It is just like how my friend Shouvik, who makes possibly the best momos in the world, has never sold any. This is because of a phenomenon called Economics.
Economics was a religion founded by Adam Smith in the 18th century based on a book called ‘The Wealth of Nations (and how we can loot it)’ written by the 12th century saint Genghis Khan.
There are of course other reasons why your movie might remain unreleased.
Sometimes you end up making a really bad movie that gets edited by you, the censor board and religious fundamentalists; Edited so much, that often you have to re-shoot, to fill in the huge gaps left by editing the parts you originally thought, were the best portions (usually steamy scenes involving your female protagonist in various stages of undress, very rarely in a steam bath)
For example, I once made a movie that had to be edited out completely, mainly because I was the actor, director, choreographer etc. I was finally left with only the End-Credits and ended up crediting my bankers in hope that they would not sue me.
The director of an unreleased film must have patience and should remember that there is a time and place for everything, though the last time and place where everything was dates back 13.7 billion years ago to the Big Bang, when everything was at the same place at the same time. So some of these movies might have to wait for the Big Fizzle to happen (the Big Fizzle is grammatically the other end of a Big Bang. No not scientifically) to get released. Which is no time soon, not counting other Big Fizzle events like Karisma and Madhuri’s comeback movies or the inevitable end of the affair we all know as AishShek.
Today, we will take a look at some movies that have remained unreleased for a long time, ending with Ka-bull Express (no relation to Ba-Bull Inc. that released last week), which has actually managed a release this week.
Aryan: Aryan is a touching story about a shadow-boxer’s fight to achieve his dreams. Aryan (Sohil Khan) is born to fight. But he is a shy, reticent Chinaman, who rarely steps out of the shadows. Hence, he becomes the college shadowboxing champ and under the tough training of his coach he dreams of winning the nationals. His Love, Neha (Sneha Ulal), is more than just his better half, especially since she’s put on a lot of weight. Aryan needs her to be around all the time while practicing shadowboxing, as he needs another shadow to fight. But life takes a turn when they marry and Aryan gives up fighting and his dreams because his mum told him never to fight after marriage. They start living a common man’s life but this is difficult since one of them is a woman and R.K.Laxman’s ‘Common Man’ doesn’t seem to be doing anything except eavesdropping. Aryan decides to take up shadowboxing again to support his family, but realizes that his wife left him three days into their marriage when he couldn’t buy her caviar and that he has been talking to the shadow of an old vase for several months now. Will Aryan be able to win the Nationals? Is he truly unbreakable? What are the Nationals?
As you probably have guessed this movie has remained unreleased for 2 reasons:
Most of the movie is dark since it deals with shadows
Everyone thought that as a Chinaman, Aryan could never be unbreakable. (I broke the china again! How will we serve tea? I wish China were unbreakable)
WordPerfect: WordPerfect, a tight action thriller, set in the backdrop of The World Scrabble Competition was to be Bill Gates’s entry to filmdom. Then there were news leaks about how he was actually dyslexic (like my godo freeind Snady, er.. like my good friend Sandy) and the movie never could get a release.
Traffic Sandwich: Traffic Sandwich was made as a telling comment on life in heavily populated cities with terrible roads (if I remember right, Bangalore) but found no release in target cities since no one was willing to wade through traffic and drive to the theatre to watch their own lives on screen.
The Life and Times of Ouches Krakkergaard: Never released, as no one knew of Ouches Krakkergaard (an Australian master craftsman who made invincibly tough cricket crotch guards)
Finally we come to Kabull Express, which releases this week. Kabull Express is the story of 2 journalists who go to Kabull in search of WMDs (no not Weapons of Mass Destruction, Well Made Diapers) They believe that people in Kabull have perfected the art of making tremendously well made diapers since they live in a country with acute water shortage. Instead, the journos end up meeting Osama Bin Laden and realize that Osama is indeed not laden with anything (hence Osama bin Laden). Which means Osama carries no baggage but poor old George W will get punished for the baggage he’s been carrying ever since little Osama beat him at Tippy Toe (a game invented by the both of them when Bush Senior was waging the last war over oil.. er Kuwait, which involves stepping on each other’s toes)
In any case, I’m checking out the WMDs tomorrow since fatherhood beckons in January! What about you?
* 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
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Dec 8 2006 - Baabul
Last weeks' OPM is coloured terribly by a few conversations I had with journo friends about the Khairlanji incident. I wrote it halfway before i had those conversations, as you can, undoubtedly, make out.
OPM*
Presents – BA-Bull Inc.
Truth, like Love, is a many splendoured thing. My version of truth can be very different from your version of it, which essentially means that truth varies with the position of the observer. In some ways Truth is much like Time, a magazine, which Einstein read from various vantage points like on an airplane, in a bus, from a WC etc. He concluded that Time varies from the point of view of the observer and after watching movies like ‘Bags Ban(ned)’ he realized that Time could, indeed, move really slowly.
It is the same with Truth.
For example, while Munnabhai bought the AK-56 for ‘self-defence’, The Govt. of India thought society needed self-defence from AK-56 owners and sued the bollocks out of him.
Similarly, SSoren thought of the removal of his erstwhile secretary as an essential move that brought down his tax liabilities. The secretary’s family, however, thought otherwise and has had him jailed.
Fact, on the other hand, is undeniably based on hard evidence, which does not alter with the position of the observer. Consider, for example, the statement “Coffee is not spelt Kauphi”. There is a certain solidity to this statement, except if you speak in an obscure Malayalam dialect that is spoken in the Gulf. This exception is not really one, as no Malayalee can be accused of being an observer. A linguist, a lecher or a union worker perhaps, but never an observer* (*- This data and extrapolation is based on a survey performed on one Malayalee, the author, who in addition to not being an observer, was also found to be an idiot, with an intellect close to that possessed by the endangered species of suicidal Sri-Lankan worm Serendipitous Cannabis)
Yes, so Fact is separated from Truth because it is usually based on solid evidence. (This led several juice makers around 600 BC to write out a set of commandments on stone to give it a feel of rock hard evidence. It later transpired that a tall handsome gentleman, played by Charlton Heston, eventually broke the stone and ended up stone broke for a while, roaming around various deserts. Paper-thin evidence of this can be found in the terribly undersold publication ‘The Many Poses of Moses’)
It is in the interest of people who want their version of truth to prevail to establish their concocted cock and bull stories as fact. This process can be observed in several areas of Life including and especially in theology, Marxism, other ‘-isms’, George Bush, marriage, politics, Ayn Rand etc.
This week we anticipate the release of Babull, which traces the story of a man who, stuck in the mire of cock and bull, experiences a change of heart in the autumn years of life.
BA – bull Inc. is a PR agency headed by a brilliant spin-doctor Bigbee who churns out Brilliantly Analysed Bull (shi*) to help his political clients further their brand of politics. His biggest achievement is his pro-Victorian systematic multi-pronged strategy against sexuality that has ensured that a nation that does a lot of it (going from a population 40 crores to roughly three times that in a span of 60 years) only discusses or displays sexuality in private. He does this for fundamentalist organizations whose unattractive leaders like to visit Rio de Janerio during the Spring Fest while protesting a film being shot at Varanasi because women with bald-heads are an affront to politicians with bald-pates (all of them, except four women politicians).
He also provides sound bites that assist various cricket personalities field barbs about match-fixing (I can’t even fix a leaking faucet! How can I fix international matches? ), pummelling old men to death (But I thought he was Dara Singh! Chak de phatte!), English commentary (abbsolootely I say!), former captains (Ooh Aah India advertisements) and Indian cricket sponsorship deals (talks are on with Pain Balm manufacturers to support the Ooh Aah India campaign).
At home, he has to eat badly made puris every single day. This is because his brother and partner (business partner! Zyada samajh mein aa raha hai kya!!?), Home Puri, is a man who loves eating puri-saag at home. He especially loves the puris Bigbee’s daughter-in-law makes and when she becomes a widow due to the unexpected death of her husband in a hair transplant operation Home Puri insists that she not remarry.
Bigbee is torn between a keeping this tradition going and escaping eating bad puris all his life.
The torment filled transition from a status-quo keeper to one who reacts to situations with humanity and gut feel is the story that Babull tracks.
When Bigbee breaks the rules and preaches widow remarriage to arrive at a win-win situation we realize that there is more than one important social message that this wonderful movie preaches. One is that breakfast is a very important meal and we shouldn’t miss it.
The other message on widow remarriage, takes the characters 3 hours, 7 songs and a lot of melodramatic situations to arrive at. Isn’t it astonishingly pitiable that in this day and age, as in any other, we need social messages to accept things like widow remarriage, universal human rights, ending child labour, defeating gender discrimination, junking caste and abolishing the Aussie and South African cricket teams??
* 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
Friday, December 01, 2006
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