The Phoenix Rises

Moving to wordpress

noreply@blogger.com (Nandhu) — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 19:58:00 +0000

After much internal debate and hand wringing, I am moving to wordpress. Here is the new site's URL.

This blog has moved

noreply@blogger.com (Nandhu) — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 21:36:00 +0000

I am moving my blog. Will reveal the details soon! And oh, I know the looks of this blog has changed, but it's gonna pretty much look like this. But the new blog looks much better, I can promise you that!

Guess who got quoted?

noreply@blogger.com (Nandhu) — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 12:14:00 +0000

Me!

At least now, the category looks right.

noreply@blogger.com (Nandhu) — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 19:53:00 +0000

I am so distracted, I can't blog. My head feels too heavy.

Sympathy for the Devil

noreply@blogger.com (Nandhu) — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 19:28:00 +0000

When Mick Jagger, then in the prime of his age, crooned, "What is puzzling you is the nature of my game," it's hard to ignore him. Not that this is a great song. Which it is. What attracts me these days is the crooning. I always chuckle when I hear the line, "Use all your well-learned politesse, Or I'll lay your soul to waste".

Ironically, I first listened this song as played by Blood, Sweat and Tears. I never liked the Rolling Stones version of it. Until this friend send it to me on a CD. Well, enjoy.

Fighting to lose

noreply@blogger.com (Nandhu) — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 18:44:00 +0000

Do people fight to lose? Since most adults don't get into physical fights, we must talk about the psychological ones, and the verbal ones. We mostly fight with the ones we love. So do we fight at first and later lose to keep a relationship? And yet we don't want to lose completely. We want a compromise. I may have lost, but I want you to acknowledge that I won. Does losing give us much as satisfaction as winning? When you lose to a loved one, do you feel a sense of fulfillment? Like the dad who tells his son he good for nothing. All his life the son proves his dad right. He feels accomplished. The accomplishment is that he proved his dad right.

Euthanasia

noreply@blogger.com (Nandhu) — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 18:22:00 +0000

He ran up the steps, two at a time, and into the house, running all the way through the dimly lit hall, into the dining room. The entire family sat around the table, grandpa at the head. Appa removed his glasses and wiped his eyes. He wasn’t crying or anything. Just tired.

Years later, the family get-together would intrude upon his dreams. A big injection, too big to be real, would spill its contents, as the fat nurse pressed the lever. He fully expected the dream to haunt and it did. At first, he woke up sweating. Later, it was a dark, void-like fear. Then he grew lazy in his reaction. He would invite the dream. Come, haunt me, he would whisper. “I am used to you now.”

He looked at all their faces, from one to the other. Then he looked from his grandpa to his father, from the man who thought of this first to the man who had agreed to it finally. The family didn't talk much after that. Even if they did, he didn’t remember.

He did remember the life going out. He remembered the silent acceptance of that horror. No one shrieked. No one cried or gasped. It was a silent death followed by a silent funeral followed by silence. Sinking deep, it ate into all their souls. They would walk about like puppets and pull each other’s strings. Or may be they were genuine. He could never tell. It would be weeks before anyone would talk.

Amma died peacefully. She had long lost her ability to talk. He never found out whether she liked the death she had. Sometimes, he would experience her death.

One night, the injection pierced the back of his neck. It was a tiny prick, but his mind exploded. He saw red.

Appa would stand in the lawn outside and smoke after dinner. He would take the dog upstairs and play with it. He would sit on the overhead tank and cry.

They would tell the visitors that Amma had been sick for years and that they fully expected her death. The visitors would nod as if they understood. Or may be they were too polite to ask. “How does anyone expect death?”

That night he told Appa not to say that again. He hadn’t expected Amma to die.

Death became him. He didn’t feel sad or depressed. He felt pretentious. Often, he would wonder whether his feelings were real.

They moved after a year, or was it two? Appa told him to leave the dog behind. He tied the dog to a tree nearby. After their car left, a neighbour would free the dog.

Two nights later, Appa woke up in his bed. It was dark outside. He went to the lawn and lit a cigarette. Minutes later, he thought he saw the dog outside. “I saw her,” he told the family. No one believed him.

Existential crisis

noreply@blogger.com (Nandhu) — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 17:28:00 +0000

O.K., you got to know by now that I am no Satre. My crisis is not gonna change the world, but you can bet it's bloody real.

A couple of days ago, I went to watch this movie called Vegam to review it. I can't begin to tell you how depressing it was for me. Having decided to review films to earn a few extra bucks, I felt that perhaps I should not be too optimistic about my career choice.

During the interval as I sipped my coke adulterated with extra water, I pondered a career change and realised my passion was for films alone. But if I had to watch two, three movies in a row like Vegam, wasn't I sure to lose my sanity?

What would I do if I had to watch 10 movies like this one?

Post interval, the frustration did get to me a bit. I wanted to jump on screen and knock some sense into the characters.

It took a couple of days to relax. I am cool again. Hope movies like that one never get made.

My review of the movie is somewhere around here. Read it if you have to.

Mondays suck!

noreply@blogger.com (Nandhu) — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 12:04:00 +0000

Mondays generally suck! I won't blog today.

Hello Mr. Ethir Katchi

noreply@blogger.com (Nandhu) — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 19:56:00 +0000

I remember watching this song from Iruvar for the first time in the theatre. It was an unique experience. Ash couldn't act back then (she later proved she could with Raincoat), but boy wasn't she lovely to look at!

Two lists of 100 movies

noreply@blogger.com (Nandhu) — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 21:21:00 +0000

The links first:

The American Film Institute's updated list of 100 top Hollywood movies.

Eddieonfilm does list of 100 top foreign films

More on the lists later.

A new couple and five odd balls

noreply@blogger.com (Nandhu) — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 20:26:00 +0000

In the centre are my friend Shainu and his wife Chinju. From left to right are: Roal, me, Jimmy, Kelly and Joji. All of us have one thing in common: Madras Christian College.

The wedding happened in the town of Thiruvalla in Kerala. I will write another post on my three-day vacation soon.

Posts on my time in MCC are here and here.

Rick Deckard a replicant

noreply@blogger.com (Nandhu) — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 18:15:00 +0000

Never realised that Rick Deckard, the cop who catches replicants in Blade Runner, was himself a replicant. The film, which is seeing its 25th year since release, is being released in a new director's cut that reveals that Deckard, played by Harrison Ford, was all along a replicant. Darn, wish I had the sense to complete the novel.

Vegam - review

noreply@blogger.com (Nandhu) — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 14:15:00 +0000

Review of the new movie Vegam is here.

An action masterpiece is Bourne

noreply@blogger.com (Nandhu) — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 20:00:00 +0000

On the whole, Bourne Ultimatum can be slightly disappointing precisely because it’s not gratifying like action movies usually are. Not much is blown up on screen and as you leave the hall you can’t help but ask yourself, “What kinda action movie was that?”

Ultimatum, the third in the Bourne series, is also paced the fastest and the most political of the three movies, based loosely on Robert Ludlum’s novels of the same name.

During the movie's climax, an unarmed Bourne stands on the edge of a Manhattan rooftop close to the CIA’s anti-terrorism building in New York and asks the agent who has a gun cocked at him, “Do you even know why you're supposed to kill me? Look at us. Look at what they make you give.” This is as political as the monosyllabic assassin is ever going to get. That Bourne too has to get obvious and point fingers at the CIA and the government machinery is such a pity because this series, more than any other in recent times, has surprised audiences and redefined the action genre. Not once before in this series have proceedings gotten this literal.

Up until now, the psychological baggage that came with the movie was always underneath its boiling surface, like an ugly creature that can’t quite keep its head down. Except for the character Pamela Landy played with superb authority by Joan Allen and Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles), most of the CIA is characterised as filled with officials who are too paranoid and kill in order not to be killed.

Matt Damon plays Bourne with sunken eyes that have deep, dark circles beneath them. Gone is the air of the successful action hero – just imagine the differences between the Arnold Schwarzenegger-starrer hit Commando and this film, and you will know what I mean.

After strangling to death an assassin in the loo of a building in Tangiers, Morocco, Damon for a minute looks as if he is crying. Clearly, murdering in cold blood is not easy for this assassin. What is even more surprising is the look of shock on face of Julia Stiles, a girlfriend Bourne doesn’t remember from the past. Later, we cut to Bourne’s crushed hands from the fistfight that precedes the murder. This is also a strange shot for an action movie because we never get to see an injury unless, like in Rambo, the hero is trying to get a bullet out of his shoulder or something. Clearly, Bourne is a vulnerable assassin, whose injures, both physical and mental, bother him tremendously. Perhaps, the mental ones, those that we never see, are harder to deal with. Damon always plays Bourne with his ghosts intact.

Ultimatum begins from where Supremacy left. After apologising to Neski’s daughter for killing her parents – whoever has apologised for killing in an action movie before – Bourne escapes from Moscow. (The Neskis are Bourne’s first targets. That tale is told in Supremacy.)

Though the globe trotting spy is common to both series, what differentiates Bourne from Bond is that Bourne is an assassin with a heart. In the next scene, you see Bourne meeting Marie’s brother (Marie is his girlfriend who is killed in Supremacy) and informing him about her death. Director Paul Greengrass lingers on the scene for a while longer that most directors would, impressing upon the audience the conflict Bourne faces all through the series.

Bourne wants revenge, and when he sees an article in the Guardian by its security correspondent, he arranges a meeting with him in London’s waterloo station. The CIA is already on the correspondent’s heels and the Waterloo sequence in an ideal example of the kind of tense sequences that the series has thrown our way. The sequence is shot in a jittery fashion that makes you teeth chatter. The editing may seem like the work of a director recklessly putting together shots in no logical sequence. But it isn’t. The effect caused by the editing that has marked the last two movies of the series is innovative and unsettling. I was amazed to see a number of top angle shots merged seamlessly with eye-level shots of Bourne on the move.

Later in the movie, in a sequence reminiscent of the one in Identity where he talks with the Frank Potente character, Bourne converses with Stiles in a café in Madrid. This time Bourne doesn’t talk much as he did then. Nicky talks a bit. She tells him how difficult it was for her to let him join the program. And pause. Greengrass cuts to Stiles to Damon to Stiles. He does this a couple of times. And then, Nicky asks, “You don’t remember anything, do you?” This is another sequence in which Greengrass excels himself; the issues troubling Bourne during the course of his peculiar life are never again as apparent.

Much of what bothers the amnesiac is from Ludlum’s best-selling series. In the novels, Bourne is sent undercover during the height of the Cold War to kill the Russian terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal. During an assignment, Bourne is shot and loses his memory. He can feel he is an assassin, but for whom? Are his murderous acts somehow vindicated? Ludlum doesn’t go to the extent of questioning the CIA’s assassination program simply because it isn’t there in his novels. That’s something that scriptwriter Tony Gilroy and others thought of as a post 9/11 addendum. Much of the plot that Ludlum expands upon in great detail is discarded. Instead, a more modern one that is meaningful to the current scenario is written in.

And 9/11 is something that has interested Greengrass. His last movie was United-93, the story of the one plane that never found its target during the 9/11 attacks.

I can straightaway name two aspects common to all three Bourne movies: The fistfight like the one in Tangiers in Ultimatum and the climatic car chase. The fistfight in a closed room with the cameraman prancing about like the fighters themselves is something pioneered by the Bourne series. And so is the no-holds barred, death-take-all car chase. Each time, Bourne’s car is wrecked. He wrecks two cars in Ultimatum, the first time after driving one off a roof and the second – an NYPD car – is crashed into a tunnel. It’s a rare logic defying moment when Bourne escapes from these wrecks relatively in good shape.

That said I found the car chase, as impressive as it was, formulaic. In a movie that defies formula, this sequence was trite.

Another thrilling moment occurs during the chase through the rooftops in Tangiers. The sound editing during this marvelously choreographed sequence is remarkable – the dance of the drumbeats in rhythm with the shots of a nearly flying Bourne as he jumps from one rooftop to the next is a special sequence that can only be enjoyed only on the bigger threatre screen.

In the past, actors like Brian Cox and Chris Cooper have impressed us. In this movie, it's the turn of David Strathairn. Exactly how Strathairn conveys to us that his character is a coward is a mystery to me. Was it the walk that reminded one of an eunuch? Or was there something else? But convey it he does and effectively so.

It’s rare instance when a mainstream Hollywood flick takes the trouble to make its hero intelligent and sensitive. In the good old days, nothing could bother the testosterone-fueled machines that inhabited the action thriller. In contrast, Damon’s Bourne doesn’t have much of a bicep to flash around. It’s his intelligence and survival instinct that are most impressive about him and give the movie a rare edge over ordinary action flicks.

Twenty20 and NYT

noreply@blogger.com (Nandhu) — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 13:55:00 +0000

This NYT article identifies Sreesanth as a batsman, which he isn't, but the most impressive thing about the story is that it appeared, along with a photograph, on the New York Times homepage, a day after India lifted the Twenty20 World Cup. In all the years of reading NYT, I have rarely seen a story that can make an Indian proud. This one certainly did!

Delicious

noreply@blogger.com (Nandhu) — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 20:21:00 +0000

Just figured out how to add the delicious thingy on to my blog. Please add me if you are on delicious.

School chale hum!

noreply@blogger.com (Nandhu) — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 20:01:00 +0000

Bharat Bala's short film for the Sarva Sishya Abhiyan looks great. The location hunt must have been mounted on a massive scale, I guess. Wished filmmakers would stop doing all the glossy, ad-like films that are just good to look at. They could do more meaningful stuff. But this is the welcome change from the sermonising films of the the 80s when all government stuff was, well, preachy.

David and I

noreply@blogger.com (Nandhu) — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 19:51:00 +0000

I will indulge in a bit of narcissism here. The other guy is David Appasamy, fellow metblogger. I am on the left.

Photo by GVB sir.

Yuvaraj's 6s

noreply@blogger.com (Nandhu) — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 19:28:00 +0000

The blogosphere is rife with opinions for and against TT cricket. I haven't seen a match yet what with Chennai being CASed and me being stuck in office all evening.

I had caught Yuvaraj's 6 sixes on the news. But watching it live is entirely another feeling. May be I will fall in love with cricket again!

B. Rangan gushes about NOT meeting AB

noreply@blogger.com (Nandhu) — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 20:35:00 +0000

B. Rangan winning the National award for Best Film Critic has been an inspiration. Hear from him.

He-She

noreply@blogger.com (Nandhu) — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 17:49:00 +0000

Prabhu used to be on Chennai Metblogs. He is funnier in person than on his blog. He-She no longer makes me chuckle the way it used to, but I think you should read it at least once if you haven't yet.

Nam Nadu review

noreply@blogger.com (Nandhu) — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 15:00:00 +0000

Review of the movie, Nam Nadu, starring Sarath Kumar and Nasser is here.

More reviews that appeared in Rediff are here and here.

My first lecture on film criticism

noreply@blogger.com (Nandhu) — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 20:02:00 +0000

I recently had the opportunity to give a lecture on film criticism to students of visual communication at the Women’s Christian College in Nungambakkam in Chennai. A teacher at the L.V. Prasad Film & TV Academy recommended my name and I landed up at the college solely on the virtue of that.

As I had little time to prepare, I talked without the aid of any notes. I found this was a very bad way to lecture. Next time, I must remember to make some notes. This is because after the first 20 minutes, I found myself struggling.

But the really interesting part of the lecture was the interactive session that followed my lecture. Many of the students at WCC seem to come from ordinary middle class backgrounds and aren’t exactly geniuses. But they were enthusiastic and asked practical questions.

Film is something I am very passionate about and soon I discovered that I could really talk to the students. They warmed up to me and soon the atmosphere turned into one of joined learning. I discovered that with a little effort I can teach really well and loved the feeling. I am sure at some of the students took home something from my talk to them.

Next time I will write a speech out and post in on the blog.

Some shots

noreply@blogger.com (Nandhu) — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 19:30:00 +0000

More photos here.

Photo via New Yorker.