So I set the video out to X11, and adjusted the subtitle file. In case anyone wants to know about it, +26700ms will fix the official Noir subtitle file.

Oh, and I tried KDE in the meantime, thinking that may be I should give the whole with-more-configurablity-comes-more-power thing a try. To be honest, I dumped KDE after logging into it only once, so this is not some serious criticism of KDE. It was so frigging slow that I knew I was never going to use it, so I made the decision without wasting any more time. And I have a P4 SSE3 processor with 1GB ram, so it’s not exactly a very slow machine.

KDE was not terminally slow though, and I guess those who want the power have to put up with it. For my part, I am happy with Xfce, which is lightning fast compared to KDE. Now I am thinking in the other direction, Fvwm. The question to be settled is, with the amount of usability I am going to sacrifice up front, will there be any significant performance boost?!

Can anyone give me some pointers comparing all these -wm variants (Fvwm, Icewm, etc etc)? I can google too, but I wanted to hear from someone who has actually used them and faced the issues.

And given someone like me who needs to peddle so many large files, the one complain I have about Thunar in Xfce is the recycle bin. Recycle bins have always been shitty in Linux, whereas Windows had it right from the beginning more or less. But Thunar takes the incompetence to another level entirely! While deleting, it copies everything to the home trash folder! I can add a few custom actions to make life easier, but I want trashing to “top directories,” which is what Gnome and KDE and Windows and every other sensible desktop does.

The release note of Thunar 0.8.0 says that they have fixed this issue (I am using 0.9.0), making Thunar the second desktop ever to fully comply with the “Desktop Trash Can Specification,” but it doesn’t seem to be the default behaviour, so I hold them responsible anyway :). And given the poor documentation they have, I suspect it is going to take time to figure out how to change this behaviour!

So custom actions are nice, but they lack the breadth of nautilus scripts back in gnome (obviously because gnome has a larger user base). I would love to be able to right click on an iso file and select a script which will mount the image to a folder inside /media (for the windows users – this is almost the same thing as creating a virtual cd drive and mounting an image file, minus the pirated softwares and superfluous clicks). I’ll take Anshul’s usual advices in such matters and one of these days I’ll stop whining about the missing features and get down to implementing them myself.

(For the gnome users – try g-scripts. It has been a while since I used gnome, but I think the script I talked about above is the mount_loopback one under File System Management (the obvious guess :)). In fact, I don’t even remember if I used this set of scripts back then! And here is another plea for help – does anyone remember the option for nero image files (like iso9660 for iso images)? It think it was something like type2***, and I had to google a lot to find it last time!)

In the meantime, I would like to hear from other Xfce users. And anyone else who has anything to say about it. :)

Going to watch “Lover of Six Years” now. :)

P.S.:
The windows boot freezes while trying to load mup.sys driver, which is the last safely loaded driver! The problem is, it doesn’t say the name of the culprit driver! There are at least two sources suggesting two different drivers responsible for this, and I think I’ll go by Microsoft assuming that the display drivers for my monitor are broken and try to load the default one. :)

I was depressed. The night before, I had watched this funky little movie called My Sassy Girl, which, too exaggerated to be interpreted even literally (it’s a bad old habit of mine, interpreting movies metaphorically, which once led me to state, to the great disapproval of my friends, that Gangster, King Kong and Silence of the Lambs shared the same thematic attraction dressed up differently), made me contemplative about my life nonetheless, and any time I think about my life, I get depressed.

The conversation on the dinner table seemed by and large redundant, and we drifted from topic to topic. Personally, I was left shocked by my recent encounter with the kaamwali bai (the maid servant, who in my frank opinion is too old to be a maid), who seemed to be after my clothes with such enthusiasm that Arun once remarked that she wanted me to strip!

There lies the crux of the matter. My clothes! On my third day in here, I agreed to pay her to wash my clothes. When I informed Anshul about it to confirm that the bai was employed by everyone else too, he gave me an enigmatic smile and nodded his head. I felt uneasy, but I forgot all about it until the bai cornered me three days afterwards.

I am not a man given to violence by temperament, and till the bai pounced on me on the matter of the clothes I was wearing, I had no idea what the usual jokes about women trying to change men meant. She demanded why I had not taken bath (actually I had), why I was wearing the same set of clothes for the last five days (actually it was six days), why I had not given her any clothes at all to be washed, and how did I propose to remain a social proposition with so many bad habits.

Impatiently, I clarified on the only point I thought was relevant, that our arrangement was monthly, that I would pay her whether she washed any of my clothes or not.

Whoever wanted men to learn from experience was a short-sighted fool, because, you see, experience is the worst possible teacher, in that it gives the tests first and the lessons afterwards. I had failed my test, and I do not care to elaborate on the aftermath.

Anyway, the whole encounter led me to remark on the dinner table that romantics aside, the bai was quite like our heroine from My Sassy Girl. Upon this, I was threatened to take my remark back, and I tried to play the suave guy by clarifying that I was merely thinking of intimidating women. But the public, ignoring my quips, assured me that I was going to have to pay dearly for my misplaced remarks.

Such is life!

Obviously I didn’t expect much from the movie, but it managed to surprise me. In spite of being devoid of any artistic merits, it offended my aesthetics. The movie can be seen as a forerunner to a whole generation of comedy bums that Bollywood is producing now.

The movie is a blatant screen adaptation of O Henry’s One Thousand Dollars (Sau Crore means One Thousand Million), with the requisite plot overheads and song-and-dance routines and the dumbing down for the masses. Stripped off of the sensibility of the original, it couldn’t have provoked me, but the movie goes on and does the exact opposite of what the story did.

While not Kafkaesque itself, One Thousand Dollars is one of the very few stories of O Henry with a Kafkaesque premise. But the story is more human, in that it substitutes the irony typical of Kafka with a dash of irreconcilable tragedy.

Kafka is fond of taking a joke, turning it inside out and then looking at it from the insider’s point of view (the insider who is now an outsider. almost all of Kafka’s stories are described from an outsider’s point of view.). Then it is no more a joke, it is an irony at varying levels of surreality. But it is never tragic, because that perspective inside the joke from which Kafka looks out is not human at all.

That is where One Thousand Dollars is different. It is human. It is a tragedy. May be I am wrong, but I have come to think of tragedy as a very human perspective.

That is why Sau Crore fails. It takes Henry’s rather whimsical interrogation into human beings and tries to look at it from the outside, making a bad joke out of it that it is.

And none of this is conscious. From the movie, it is very clear that Dev Anand doesn’t appreciate enough the pathos of the story to stop from making such a mockery of it.

Considering all the crap that gets thrown at me, I know I am overreacting. But then, why shouldn’t I?

I have just watched the irritating Heyy Babyy, which tries to pass off a lot of vulgarity in the name of comedy. It is one of the dumbest and most disgusting movies I have (unfortunately) seen this year. I am surprised by the amount of “critical acclaim” it has gathered.

There were some nice ideas, like Prof Parimal Tripathy (but the follow through was unsuccessful, because this was a movie made by the brainless for the brainless), but the sheer vulgarity of the movie overwhelmed everything else. I could grant them the suspension of disbelief and the attempts at crude juvenile humour, but their mindless abuse of the cinematic language to produce counter points to a point just made was too much to handle. At one side they introduce Vidya Balan (at the wedding) as a sharif and khaandaani girl, who is the least likely to engage in freelance romance, and right there we see a sexed up Vidya dancing provocatively, to the point of touching her own b**bs, and I ask myself, what kind of sharif and khaandaani girl did Sajid Khan, the director of the movie, had in mind?!

In case someone is looking for decent (sometimes great) comedies in recent times, I would advise him to try the ones from Priyadarshan and the one-offs like Khosla Ka Ghosla or Bheja Fry.

I saw promos of Om Shanti Om and Saawariya, and I’m sure these movies are going to be big hits. Om Shanti Om is a sure winner, because it does what no other movie has done before, recreating a version of our seventies’ movie culture, and as a result has a freshness that’ll appeal to the average cinema goer. Good luck to the SRK basher (me being one of them), but this is a movie in the right direction and SRK is the right choice for his part. But of course, the seventies’ version we are going to see in this movie is going to be very different then the seventies as we knew it.

The first few seconds of Saawariya were slightly disappointing, but soon I was enchanted by the sheer beauty of the images and the sequences waltzing through. The beats in the background promise a captivating score, and the intricately detailed imagery provoke a feeling of poignant yet joyful emotion that I can associate with love.

However, contrary to SLB’s claim that he is trying to reach back his roots as a filmmaker, trying to relive his early innocence, this movie, or at least the trailer, is a testimony to the maturity he has attained. There are a few stills which reminded me of Devdas and Black very strongly.

Talking of that, I believe this movie will make a kind of trilogy along with Devdas and Black. Devdas was dominated by the colour red, and Black, redundant to say, by the colour black. Whoever has seen the promos of Saawariya will agree to the opulence and dominance of the colour blue. Red – Black – Blue. I am talking nonsense.

Here is a rough selection of ten movies in my to-watch list (apart from Om Shanti Om and Saawariya) -

1. Transfermers -
2. I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With
3. I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK
4. The Bourne Ultimatum
5. Zodiac
6. Love in the Time of Cholera
7. Vivaldi (Joseph Fiennes)
8. Boyhood
9. The Long Goodbye (Altman)
10. My Wife Is an Actress.

Note 2: To those who received the drafts – The reference to Robert Kolker was incorrect, which I discovered after going painstalkingly through his mammoth book again in an effort to quote him exactly (it contains the whole of GRE word list many times over). That would explain the delay. He said some nice insightful things though.

Note 3: This story, and its prequel, are officially declared to be ficticious accounts incorporating no characters inspired by anyone living or dead.

The Interview with the Professor

I didn’t understand the conclusion of the movie Micky One when I saw it for the first time. In fact, I didn’t understand it till I had seen almost all of Arthur Penn‘s defining works, till it occurred to me that violence was the underlining theme in his movies, violence overcoming a distance of some kind – distance created by blindness in The Miracle Worker (this is one reason I considered Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Black plagiarised, he lifted this motif from Penn’s movie), impotence in Bonnie and Clyde (the doggerel was the immediate cue), paranoia in Mickey One (if you never understood the movie’s ending, this is the clue), the list goes on.

If one were to look at the underlining theme behind my fateful interview with Professor SS the next day, he would have discovered Mad Max, women, dope, James Bond, gang rape and Professor KV, all in that order.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me begin at the beginning.

To put it without much ado, I have never been the man for the bright sunny mornings, partly because I have never been an early riser, but that was a day well worth making an exception for.

I was up early for a consecutive second day. There was sunshine in my heart and there was sunshine on my face, and it made the world outside look more than it was worth. My heart swelled with the scent of the early morning breeze, cold and generously sprinkled with the dust from the construction sites around C**, and when my heart could hold it no more, it spilled out and became music for my soul. I joined it and sang with gay abandon, though my hostel mates later gave a different description of the events, but that might have been due to the quality of my singing. Nothing could get me down that day. Well, almost nothing, till I remembered my appointment later on that day with Professor SS.

That was my mood when I proceeded to the breakfast table. In retrospect, I think Ni(ved)ita and Pad(mav)ati might have been giving me murderous stares on that occasion, which, I am sad to report, were completely lost on me. An(irb)it did cast the hostile glares in my direction as usual, but that he did always anyway; except when he was mad with anger at me, in which case he took extra pains to be friendly with me and flashed all of his white set of teeth at me at every opportunity. Every time he did that, I would grab someone nearby and ask him to take our photographs together. Two old friends dining amiably. Two old friends looking at each other amiably. Two old friends smiling at each other amiably.

But this is not about that.

I took my usual place next to An(shu)l, Sou(men)dra and Riya on the breakfast table. After some moments of uncertain silence, Sou(men)dra spoke.

“You know what, I have a solution that will solve all your problems at one stroke.”

An(shu)l observed nonchalantly that the last time someone had said that, he came up with the nuclear bomb.

This made all of us contemplative for some time, at the end of which I asked Sou(men)dra about his solution, which turned out to be a bunch of excuses, brilliant and intricate but convoluted excuses, to evade the responsibility for my mail. I like to face the consequences of my actions, however, mostly because they are funny, and Riya supported me in this.

“You realise what you have done, right?”, she asked.

I was going to answer that yes I did, but then I remembered the last time I had said that. I asked what had I missed, and was made devastated in return.

To cut a long story short, SS had thought that my remark was intended for the girls, who also happened to be a minority (only three in the entire undergrad program). It wasn’t until much later that Shree[vat]sa remembered what was to us the only known abuse of Rolypoly, and it was a boy who had been the victim. Had this information come out in time, I could have been saved, but the smart chap who observed that comedy is all about timing forgot to notice that tragedy is all about mistiming irrespective of its Greek or Shakespearean or modern origins. Such is life!

I finished my breakfast and started for SS’ office with a heavy heart dragging my heavier feet.

When I coughed and said my slurred “ess-use me” to SS in his office, he was busy checking his e-mail. He looked back with a questioning glance and I introduced myself. He turned off the monitor, wheeled his chair towards me and rolled his sleeves.

“So you are that Mad Max character, eh? What the hell do you think you are?”

I couldn’t say that I was not pleased by that comparison, but etiquette demanded that I look guilty and sorry.

“You think you are smart huh? You think you can get away with this? What did you mean by that letter?”

I thought it was an invitation to explain myself. I am perpetually in the habit of committing this error. I mistake rhetorical speculations for literal questions and proceed to answer them.

“Sir, I think there has been a misunderstanding, I wasn’t thinking of the girls at all when…”

“Shut up,” he roared, “enough,” he paused for breath, “I thought what anyone in his right mind will think reading that disgusting mail, and you have no excuses to defend yourself. You have behaved very very irresponsibly, and you better be ashamed of it.”

He softened a bit at this point, “You see, women are a minority here, and we have to make them feel safe. What you have done is not only demeaning and insulting, it might also scare them,” his temper seemed to rise at the thought. “What are you, an egomaniac bastard? Do you think you are James Bond or something? Do you think you are so sexy that you can insult any of these girls?”

Again, I was flattered by the comparison and the compliment, but couldn’t thank him for it. He went on bellowing at me. Inspired by the excitement of the moment, he even stood up from his chair and started moving towards me little by little as he continued shouting at me. I thought it might be safer to stay close to the door and started inching towards it as he tried to corner me. At the end of ten minutes, we had both moved on to the corridor, and he had moved on to the gang rape part of my mail.

“And how, how could you write about such a sensitive issue like that? You think joking about rape is funny? Do you think gang rape is funny?” From there on, he went on to talk about something related to Dalits and Gang Rapes and the social problem that it is. He must have yelled “sex,” “dope,” “rape” and “gang rape” at least a dozen times within a span of a minute, at the end of which Professor KV, whose room was next to that of Professor SS, came out of his office to take active part in the discussion.

He listened silently for the next five minutes as Prof SS cruised through me. And then came the conclusion, “One should never do such irresponsible things. I think an apology mail should be sent.”

Finally seeing his chance to participate, Prof KV intervened timely, “Yes yes, I think that will be appropriate. You should immediately send a mail apologising.”

Except that he said it to Prof SS.

I was stunned for a moment. So was Prof SS. Then he recovered his speech and started yelling at Prof KV. “What do you mean I should send a mail? Why should I be sorry? What are you talking about?”

As the explanations and arguments grew in length and intensity, I decided that it was time I gave them a slip.

Everyone lived happily ever after.

1)B(han)u and A(rna)b were chatting.

S(hou)vik – A(rna)b, don’t listen to him, he is gay.
B(han)u (indignantly) – I am not gay, I am broadminded.

2) S(hou)vik – Are you changing your room partner to Ramprasad?
Bhanu – No no, it’s difficult to make a new relationship in such a short time.

For the sake of records, Beli was Bhanu’s partner in room (and anything else that we don’t know of yet).

3) S(hou)vik – I am a narcissist. I look at myself in the mirror and masturbate.

The Annie Hall Effect

And this one time in our hostel ;), we watched Annie Hall after I insisted that everyone does so. The following scene inspired us, and a string of comments followed -

Alvy Singer: Oh stop it, you’re having an affair with your college professor, that jerk that teaches that incredible crap course, Contemporary Crisis in Western Man…
Annie Hall: Existential Motifs in Russian Literature. You’re really close.
Alvy Singer: What’s the difference? It’s all mental masturbation.
Annie Hall: Oh, well, now we’re finally getting to a subject you know something about.
Alvy Singer: Hey, don’t knock masturbation. It’s sex with someone I love.

4) Ar(ghy)a (when An(shu)l suggested that we should have a GBM (general body meeting) as soon as possible) -
What’s the point? Democracy is just vocal masturbation.

5) S(hou)vik (when I asked about his physics experiment report) -
That is experimental masturbation.

6) S(hou)vik (on Einstein and Philosophers and their futility) -
All philosophical orgasms are faked.

7) I don’t remember who came up with the question, but we all seeemed to come up with the answer at the same time, though independently.

Q: What’ll A(nir)bit’s autobiography be called?
A: Physical Masturbation!

8) An(shu)l (when I said I am going to put all that in my blog) -
History will be on your side, because you’ll be masturbating it.

But that’s not how he shows it. What we see is a row of masturbating young men who are trying to keep up their illusion by touching each other selectively and by looking at pornographic images put at the back of the guy in front. They have pressed their ears to the wall, and we can hear in the background what appears to be the moaning of an orgasm. The camera keeps drifting, and we have some time to think about the scene at hand to allow us to detach ourselves with casual deprecation. Then we come to Ryu’s room to find him sitting on a chair with the kind of detachment that can come only from utter despair, and we find his ailing sister moaning in pain on the floor.

Now we have to judge those young men again in light of our previous impression.

Just another scene calculated to shock? Yes, but there is more that Park Chan-wook conveys here. Those masturbating young men, they are not perverts, they are common human beings just like you and me. Their lives are our lives, and that is all there is to life.

It is an undeniable fact that the shock-value is one of the main selling points of his movies, but patterns emerge when one puts everything together in order to understand them. The worlds he creates are an indirect critique on the one we live in, and corruption is the theme it is built on. I like his portrayals so much because they happen to coincide with my own discouraging view of the human kind. His characters are neither heroes nor villains, they are individuals driven by existential despair towards their uncertain and brutal ends. The brutality is both physical and mental. It is best expressed in his own words - In my films, I focus on pain and fear. The fear just before an act of violence and the pain after. This applies to the perpetrators as well as the victims.

His movies can be seen and interpreted literally, but I often find scenes which can be metaphorically interpreted, which, at the same time being graphic and stylistic enough to daze the audience, subtly bring out the existential theme of his world and blend it with the theme of his movie, often vengeance. The depth of his movies does not lie in the theme or the content; It lies in the outlook, the insight they offer.

If one were to evaluate him objectively, Old Boy should be his best work till date (I haven’t seen I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK), the one where he perfected his cinematic style finally, but somehow I find Sympathy for Mr Vengeance a bit closer to my heart.

While Mr Vengeance is far from Old Boy and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance in terms of the cinematic style and techniques he is famous for, he clearly anticipates himself stylistically in this grim and depressing tale.

Park Chan-wook has sometimes been criticised for the extremism in his movies, but in the end that is what sets him apart. There is an integrity to the way he creates his corrupt worlds. That is the key to understand his movies, to overcome the moral ambiguity of his characters and understand that being corrupt is not being evil.

It reminds me of what Damien had to say in The Final Conflict (Omen III) – Most people confuse evil with their own trivial lusts and perversions. Now, true evil is as pure as innocence. Chan-wook’s movies are not about what we in our illusion of grandeur consider evil, it’s about the trivial lusts and perversions that actually underline our lives.

I hate all the studio-forced star-driven farce that we watch in the name of good cinema here in India and elsewhere. I have no problem watching a movie as the genre crap that the heck it is, but it really tires me when people take them seriously. They might be more polished and sophisticated in their looks, but that’s about all that sets them apart from our Bollywood lot.

Musicals are somewhat likable (ah, Music!), but the usual strings of American propaganda is just terrible. Take Cinderella Man for example. IMDB rates it at 8.0, and I never saw a bigger piece of shit in my entire life. There is not an iota of intelligence to be found anywhere in the movie, and it misrepresents Max Baer too (but Paul Giamatti and Russel Crowe were good). Gladiator is another example that comes to mind.

So given the kind of impression one is likely to derive from the usual media coverage, I didn’t expect much when I stopped to watch a few scenes from Million Dollar Baby while flipping through the channels. This post is not a tribute or anything, but the movie, for a change, was very decent. And intelligent too. It was touching, and I didn’t feel like going on my usual spree through the channels after it ended, and sat down there listening to the music (end credits) and feeling depressed, to discover the useless information that Clint Eastwood himself composed the music for the movie.

I will not get into the political debate surrounding the movie (which I unearthed afterwards in google), principally because I consider them off-point and idiotic. Anyway, it was a very well made movie, and I am never going to underrate Clint Eastwood again.

I guess that this trait can be traced back to one of my Freudian nightmares in childhood, but that doesn’t help me in coping up with this mess. I mean, what sort of people keep writing one love story after another! Someone might try to point out P G Wodehouse here; but then, he was funny. Anything can be excused if it is funny enough.

And of all people I! Honestly, I don’t think it is impressive to come across as a male chauvinistic moron insisting on Arnold Schwarzenegger, but I really can’t stand an imbecile idiot of a man out of his senses pledging his undying love to the leading lady to reassure her that he’ll “always” be there. I could gulp it down if he did with a bit of irony in his voice or a slight twinkle in his eyes, letting me in on the joke, the conspiracy. But no, he must go on and scare me out of my wits with his sincerity.

In fact, I have almost stopped watching mindless romantic flicks because of this reason. The one I recently watched was You, Me and Dupree. Movies don’t get any lamer than this, but I had to waste time till I caught a shuttle back to my hostel and I got the special ticket priced at 10 bucks (as opposed to the usual ones priced at 120 bucks). Anyway, the movie went all very fine till the build up to the climax when I woke up from my slumber (Ok, I actually watched the whole movie, but don’t blame me. I was jobless.) to find the romantic leads kissing each other and throwing up the usual crap about love and care and shit.

This was the only scene which made an impact on me in the whole movie. I felt so scared and sick that I thought I was never going to talk to or touch another human being again. I felt like running away and hiding somewhere, where no one, in particular no girls, could ever find me. The thought that one day I might be doing all that willingly was an immensely depressing thought, a thought that subsequently had to be driven away by a full course through roasted chicken and biriyanis (my Firefox spell checker tells me that biriyanis is spelled wrong, and offers the alternate spelling lesbianisms).

All romantic flicks do this to me. They make me want to hide somewhere and avoid any sort of human contact. As it is life is already pathetic. I tried to order my first pizza about two weeks back and miserably failed. In fact, J(iga)r thought I had an ego problem or something because I always asked him to talk to the shopkeepers when we went out together. But he eventually understood (or so I hope); may be when he found out that I couldn’t really talk to the waiters either.

I am improving though. I am sure I’ll improve significantly once I go back to my diet of Tim Burton and Stanley Kubrick and Action/ Adventure/ Woody Allen. I think the leading pair of You, Me and Dupree (They never had a single intelligent conversation through out the movie!) fit the random pair Alvy Singer picks up from pavement in Annie Hall -

Alvy: You look like a very happy couple…How do you account for it?
Young Woman: I’m very shallow and empty and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say.
Boyfriend: And I’m exactly the same way.

Ironically enough, I never penned down the only love story I could possibly have wanted to write myself. I have written, nevertheless, half a dozen love stories and countless poems on the same note at the request of others – some my friend, some not, but all of them in love (I have half a mind to agree with Oscar Wilde calling love a tragedy; but then, as Umberto Eco put it, Wilde probably suffered from furor sententialis, i.e., pleasurable rhetorical incontinence). A lot of people have the tendency to mistake the obvious for the profound and sometimes, to my regret, the beautiful. So I had prospered with my excuse of a poetry in those days (but I was very good at meter and rhyming).

Whatever. I guess I’ll just get on with my love story.

But as the movie progresses, the hints of a Shakespearean tragedy disappears. With such an original beginning (for an Indian movie), Chopra soon gives way to all sorts of cliches that we in the Bollywood specialize in. However, in one of his better performances yet, Amitabh manages to breath life into the character (and the movie) which seems to have been written with him in mind.

For example, when Amitabh stands in front of the chest in his room, we know instinctively that he is going to pull out that scarf Rani Sahiba had dropped a few scenes back. Then, since he wants to express his anguish over his failure, what better (and more cinematic) way to destroy a piece of cloth than burn it? But at the hands of Amitabh, this tedious and predictable scene (it should be borne in mind that the scene doesn’t make much sense in the first place unless we stretch the point) becomes one of the key scenes for his character.

Looking closely, however, we discover that the character of Eklavya has no real substance, and has to depend on the tried and tested formulas to get the point across. His character is well sketched, but lacks depth. Just like “Black,” the character works only because it is
Amitabh playing it.

In comparison, Boman Irani’s character was much more real, and could have been made frightening in its helpless frustration and resignation. Looking at him one thinks that he is not much unlike Antonio Salieri, and lo! He whips out a plan for his ownAmadeus.

Jackie Shroff and Jimmi Shergil are more than adequate in their short roles. Raima Sen felt like a surprise discovery in this movie. She had some real acting talents after all!

Sanjay Dutt’s character of a dalit DSP is a stitch up job to hold the script together. He is completely miscast in the character, though he does a decent job. He has acted so seriously that it is hard not to like him.

Vidya Balan looks as lovely as ever, and the fleeting moments of her romance with Saif Ali Khan remind us very strongly of “Parineeta.” One wonders why she made such an elaborate preparation (reading books on Rajasthan and other local researches! she mentioned them in an
interview) for such a short role that hardly required Rajasthani sensibilities (of which she showed none). She has been wasted in yet another movie.

(Note: I didn’t mean to imply that Vidya did badly in the movie by discussing how lovely she looks. It’s just that I am so smitten! She was her usual best in the movie, and one couldn’t have asked more.)

Saif just about holds his character. The problem is that the audience is asked to relate to the emotions of characters like the young Rana (Saif Ali Khan) with the briefest of introductions and the corniest of dialogues. Since the script did not allow for much character development, Chopra should have gone for the actions and mannerisms rather than the words. May be a bit longer movie would have been a good idea.

The brilliant cinematography and camera-work fail to hide the lack of a story as the movie fast progresses towards its predictable end. The director manages to keep the atmosphere intact till the very end, almost making the movie worth watching. But what the hell, one would be entirely justified for sitting through the movie just for the first ten fifteen minutes.

Chopra stops short of being gimmicky and tries to concentrate on the story once in a while, but the attempt (pressure?) to fit a commercial conclusion to the movie leaves an unsympathetic impression. The script could have been tighter without many of the sentimental false notes.
The commendable restraint in explaining plot details, however, was one bright point, except for the chemistry between Sanjay Dutt and Amitabh.

The background score and the sound tracks are competent, and they complement the movie well, sometimes touching a tender nerve, and sometimes depicting the acute agony of the characters.

In spite of the appearance, Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s “Eklavya” is not a murder mystery. It is not a love story, either. The way it ends does remind me of the Indian soap operas, but that would be an unkind comparison and the movie is good enough not to be dismissed that blandly.

All in all, Vidhu Vinod Chopra disappoints somewhat, though not probably as a director. The sheer originality behind the form of the movie stands out and puts it above the rest of the pack. With passage of time, I am sure this movie will be seen as an important commentary on Indian Cinema as a reflection of our growing consciousness about the technical aspects of movie-making in the frontier of our industry.

One of my problems with the movie was that I failed to relate to it. None of the issues or sentiments portrayed in the movie have any relevance to me, so I was pretty much detached from it all the while. However, some of the scenes were just terrific.

But the movie had a great start, and could be watched solely for the brilliant performance by Amitabh Bachan, not to mention the excellent cinematography. I give this movie a 2.5/5.

But as the movie progresses, the hints of a Shakespearean tragedy disappears. With such an original beginning (for an Indian movie), Chopra soon gives way to all sorts of cliches that we in the Bollywood specialize in. However, in one of his better performances yet, Amitabh manages to breath life into the character (and the movie) which seems to have been written with him in mind.

For example, when Amitabh stands in front of the chest in his room, we know instinctively that he is going to pull out that scarf Rani Sahiba had dropped a few scenes back. Then, since he wants to express his anguish over his failure, what better (and more cinematic) way to destroy a piece of cloth than burn it? But at the hands of Amitabh, this tedious and predictable scene (it should be borne in mind that the scene doesn’t make much sense in the first place unless we stretch the point) becomes one of the key scenes for his character.

Looking closely, however, we discover that the character of Eklavya has no real substance, and has to depend on the tried and tested formulas to get the point across. His character is well sketched, but lacks depth. Just like “Black,” the character works only because it is
Amitabh playing it.

In comparison, Boman Irani’s character was much more real, and could have been made frightening in its helpless frustration and resignation. Looking at him one thinks that he is not much unlike Antonio Salieri, and lo! He whips out a plan for his ownAmadeus.

Jackie Shroff and Jimmi Shergil are more than adequate in their short roles. Raima Sen felt like a surprise discovery in this movie. She had some real acting talents after all!

Sanjay Dutt’s character of a dalit DSP is a stitch up job to hold the script together. He is completely miscast in the character, though he does a decent job. He has acted so seriously that it is hard not to like him.

Vidya Balan looks as lovely as ever, and the fleeting moments of her romance with Saif Ali Khan remind us very strongly of “Parineeta.” One wonders why she made such an elaborate preparation (reading books on Rajasthan and other local researches! she mentioned them in an
interview) for such a short role that hardly required Rajasthani sensibilities (of which she showed none). She has been wasted in yet another movie.

(Note: I didn’t mean to imply that Vidya did badly in the movie by discussing how lovely she looks. It’s just that I am so smitten! She was her usual best in the movie, and one couldn’t have asked more.)

Saif just about holds his character. The problem is that the audience is asked to relate to the emotions of characters like the young Rana (Saif Ali Khan) with the briefest of introductions and the corniest of dialogues. Since the script did not allow for much character development, Chopra should have gone for the actions and mannerisms rather than the words. May be a bit longer movie would have been a good idea.

The brilliant cinematography and camera-work fail to hide the lack of a story as the movie fast progresses towards its predictable end. The director manages to keep the atmosphere intact till the very end, almost making the movie worth watching. But what the hell, one would be entirely justified for sitting through the movie just for the first ten fifteen minutes.

Chopra stops short of being gimmicky and tries to concentrate on the story once in a while, but the attempt (pressure?) to fit a commercial conclusion to the movie leaves an unsympathetic impression. The script could have been tighter without many of the sentimental false notes.
The commendable restraint in explaining plot details, however, was one bright point, except for the chemistry between Sanjay Dutt and Amitabh.

The background score and the sound tracks are competent, and they complement the movie well, sometimes touching a tender nerve, and sometimes depicting the acute agony of the characters.

In spite of the appearance, Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s “Eklavya” is not a murder mystery. It is not a love story, either. The way it ends does remind me of the Indian soap operas, but that would be an unkind comparison and the movie is good enough not to be dismissed that blandly.

All in all, Vidhu Vinod Chopra disappoints somewhat, though not probably as a director. The sheer originality behind the form of the movie stands out and puts it above the rest of the pack. With passage of time, I am sure this movie will be seen as an important commentary on Indian Cinema as a reflection of our growing consciousness about the technical aspects of movie-making in the frontier of our industry.

One of my problems with the movie was that I failed to relate to it. None of the issues or sentiments portrayed in the movie have any relevance to me, so I was pretty much detached from it all the while. However, some of the scenes were just terrific.

But the movie had a great start, and could be watched solely for the brilliant performance by Amitabh Bachan, not to mention the excellent cinematography. I give this movie a 2.5/5.

“When I heard that, I knew the film would not work, as youngsters were not able to relate to its basic premise. But mark my words, Kisna will prove to be a classic.”
(Subhash Ghai, as told to Mini Anthikad-Chhibber, METROPLUS (The Hindu), Chennai Edition, 7th September, 2006. link)
To appreciate this comment, one has to watch the movie “KISNA, the warrior poet”, but I don’t recommend it because I don’t want to loose my blog readers. The classic catch-22 situation.
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“Salman Khan, Shahrukh Khan, Amir Khan”
(Sanjay Leela Bhansali, in Coffee with Karan, when asked to order the three khans in the order of preference (in the rapid question round or whatever it is called))
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I think that the film Clueless was very deep. I think it was deep in the way that it was very light. I think lightness has to come from a very deep place if it’s true lightness.
(Alicia Silverstone, Actress, on the movie Clueless.)
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“My favourite horror movies are the ones made by Karan Johar.”
(Ram Gopal Verma. This started a whole thread of controversy. Incidentally, RGV also said that he thinks Karan Johar is a better director than James Cameron and K3G is a better movie than Titanic.)
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“…I clearly told Abbas-Mustan that it would be very difficult for me to play a dumb character. But they convinced me that my character only plays “dumb”…”
(Sameera Reddy, to Ali Bin Abdulla. The New Sunday Express, Chennai edition, Feb 11, 2007)
I’ll repost this article again when the movie (Race) comes out. When asked what does she do besides acting, she said, “… Given a chance, I’d love to spend all 24 hours of the day at the gym.” The only other thing she does is spend time with her parents whenever she can.

What a life!