Wall E

Pixar seem to out-do themselves each time they make a movie, and this started with Toy Story, way back in the 1990s. There have been so many animated films of late in Hollywood, that it makes you wonder how many of them are good quality. I saw the trailer of Kung Fu Panda and picked up Cars and Alvin and the Chipmunks on DVD. Being a fan of animated movies, I expected much too much from all these and was disappointed, except for Cars, which was a superb effort.

Pixar always seems to go one step further than any other animator (and even many other film studios). With Wall E, they have outdone themselves as usual. Wall E deals with some major ecological, epistemic, psychological and ethical questions, all packaged into a superbly crafted animated film.

Wall E is a trash compactor robot that works on a future earth nearly devoid of life, rendered barren, dusty and stormy because of the inability of humans to use environmentally friendly technologies. The earth seems to have become an experimental playground for the human space effort, and humans have long migrated into space, at the time the movie is set. Wall E is one of the surviving technologies left over from a time of intelligent robots. Strangely, Wall E seems to have gone beyond what its circuits allow it to do, and developed a very human type of intelligence, bordering on emotional intelligence. It seems to be either that humans in future generations enabled robots with emotional capacity, or enabled them with the capacity to evolve and change their logical pathways, within certain limits. While the theme sounds very scientific, the action presented on the screen is the incredibly child like behavior of Wall E the trash compactor robot.

One fine day, on its regular chores between dust storms, Wall E discovers a plant, growing out of a small boot long discarded in the heaps of trash that had to have once been Manhattan Island. Excited, Wall E does its best to preserve this plant in its bunker.

Then, something that Wall E hasn’t ever seen, happens. A spacecraft descends in the vicinity of its work area, and a shiny robot pops out of it. Wall E is stunned by the good looks of this new character. A running theme in Wall E is how Wall E likes watching this old movie of a couple singing a song together. The robot seems to develop a penchant for company over time, which makes it long for this new robot on the block.

The story then reveals Wall E’s adventures as it tries to protect the solitary plant that it discovered, and try and bring the spacefaring humans back to inhabit the earth. Wall E is another feather in Pixar’s cap, in the same league of likeable and excellent entertainment as all its other films, especially the better known ones like Toy Story, Monsters Inc, A Bug’s Life and The Incredibles.

Some of the things that struck me in Wall E:

• Very nice dynamic range for all the animation
• Great textures on the robot’s parts
• Superb emotion from the robots. They’ve thought of how intelligent creatures who are structured differently from humans can express emotion. This is a delight to watch.
• Themes relevant to American society today - for youngsters in a society languishing in wasteful spending, wasteful lifestyles and habits, this little movie puts forward an interesting notion - that they can wreck the Earth’s existing ecosystem if they don’t try hard enough to keep human society environmentally friendly in its functioning.
• Robotics and robopsychology - some very interesting, childlike ideas here, and the more childlike they are, the more they will be to me! I loved reading Asimov’s books and short stories on robots and robopsychology. Wall E provides an interesting (if not entirely scientific… it is a movie after all!) look at how a robot can process information to interprets feelings rather than thoughts. Somehow, the fact that a robot can think of love, is more revealing about our own mind’s workings, rather than just a fantastic idea. When I start empathizing with Wall E (robots in general), I discover a different side of me, at times, a being without the tiredness associated with humans, or the faltering associated with our thoughts. The trial and error that is so part of human nature and evolution can be a long winded approach to look at things in a fresh, new light.
• Hitherto unimagined modes of love - this is an interesting fall out of Wall E, in that its screenplay is as much an experiment as it is structured and within a story. The very fact that it is animated and contrived makes it possible to see how different robots (with different characteristics, with different configurations and differing levels of intelligence) see the world around them. Somehow, this is more illustrative of humans than humans themselves, because our bodies are generic machines that are not configured for one or a few tasks. When you tend to configure any machine in such a way, you tend to make its position explicit, and in a sense, more interesting, since the facts about it are well known. When the characteristics of actors in a scene are so well known, things work on their own accord, on screen. Pixar seems to have achieved this, that has hitherto not been achieved in an animated movie, through Wall E.
• There is hardly any dialogue in the movie, save towards the end. This makes the movie a visual narrative, a comedy of errors in places, and in general, very difficult to put down. It is a known fdact that most human communication is through non-verbal communication, and yet, there are tons of movies with long winded dialogues but little precious screenplay. There is so much that can be accomplished by movies that have the screenplay of Wall E or say, Ratatouille, which was a smash hit.

Ten avatars too many?

Dasavatharam is a hyped movie, as I have recorded in my previous post. My friend and I travelled four hours to Edison in New Jersey to watch this movie and also catch up with his family friend, who was kind enough to host us there. Thanks, Y! My friend and I both agreed that going to Edison for the movie alone would not have been worth it.

To concisely describe my Dasavatharam experience is easy. Which is not exactly good for a blockbuster movie. I have always been wary of blockbuster movies that fail to excite me intellectually. I can safely say that Dasavatharam was not one of them, while Sivaji was. However, I cannot claim that I found any of the real action behind the “scientific” background of the movie authentic. I did find many scenes interesting. To get some of the negative commentary I have to give the movie out of the way, the following things sucked: the make up, some of the special effects, both of which looked artificial, and of course, Asin’s average acting as the Iyengar girl Andal. All this made for an average blockbuster, if that is any term. However, the expectations were probably piled too high in my mind, since Kamal has been, in my mind, a thinking actor and any film of this magnitude would have his stamp all over it. And Dasavatharam does. Kamal’s George W Bush has average make up, but excellent body language. Christian Fletcher’s character has very poor make up, but excellent action there. Same goes with Narahasi, the Japanese martial arts exponent. I agree that some of the avatars of Kamalahasan in this movie were unnecessary, especially the giant, the punjabi pop singer (who sings in flawless Tamizh) and even Narahasi (although his Jap Tam-speaking sister was a fun feature of the movie).

The first half of the movie was pretty well done, especially the first few scenes. There was a semblance of a plot to the whole thing. As soon as the second half began however, things got pretty random, and without the lack of a clear direction in the complex plot, the film faltered. I know that many fans of Kamalahasan would certainly spare a second quota of 3 hours to watch the movie. My own movie experience was bad, however, in that the theater I saw it in goofed up the projector during the first half, after which they turned the projector off and back on.

The audience was a full house desi audience (what else can one expect in New Jersey?). I heard visible giggles from all quarters when George W Bush arrived on the screen (whether the appalling make up or Dubya himself is to blame remains a mystery). Kamal has put in an awesome performance, he has acted well in nearly all roles. Perhaps his best in this movie comes as Balram Naidu, a universal favourite of the audience. His double entendre jokes, and his obsequious Telugu speaking Iyengar assistant make up a lot of the humour in the movie. Krishnaveni Paatti was totally unnecessary and was a pathetic idea.

Despite all its failings, I think Dasavatharam has what it takes to be a big grosser, given the expectations of the average Tamil movie goer. Most people I have met speak of Rangaraja Nambi’s character as one of the best in the movie, and I agree that Kamal has done a pretty good job there. Some people also felt that ten roles were too many, which is true. Ten Kamalahasans, a tricky little story, a pseudoscientific premise of chaos theory (on which you will find some material on this website, look in the archives for my experiments with non-linear dynamics), biological weapons, the tsunami, the prospect of seeing arbit national/state leaders on the screen, etc., will draw a huge crowd, and these elements of the plot pay off for the 130 or so crores spent on it. I doubt Dasavatharam has not made up its expenses through revenues already, which makes it a hugely successful venture.

I have been watching a lot of movies lately and have some interesting perspectives which I would like to write about in another post. In short, I think Dasavatharam deserved better make up and special effects, and that the pace needed to be slower, the story with fewer loopholes. The grandeur in the opening and closing sequences with the political leaders and so on could have been removed. I wouldn’t mind if Kamal had played one less well known character - George Bush was a mistake, although well acted out. The screenplay of the first half was excellent, but the editing and the screenplay in the second half looked very botched and as if it was done by someone in a hurry (or by an amateur). Having said that, not many movies that have attempted something on this scale have pulled it off (although Hollywood does this kind of thing regularly with their blockbuster movies on comic heroes and what not).

Worth my money? Probably. A good effort by Kamalahasan? Oh yes. What let it down? Poor direction, rambling story with loose ends, non-linear storytelling without a narrator, etc. What should Kamal do next? Maybe make a movie as one comical character. (Quality, rather than quantity). What do I want to see next? Wall E.

Dr. Kamal and Mr. Hype

Well, what can I say about Dasavatharam? I haven’t seen it yet, but I would like to. For various reasons.

I expect that it should be as fun to watch as Sivaji (and trust me, I wish I had walked away from that movie at times, but came back for the funny bits in the movie, and that movie was funny overall, despite being, as usual, unrealistic, full of cliches and stereotypes). Tell that to my tamil friends and they’d say “Did you like the Matrix?”, (sarcastically, would you believe me?) or some such luddite thing. I pity only myself at such times since the guy hadn’t realized the premises made in the Matrix in the initial stages of the movies, that makes at least the first movie believable. It is fiction, no doubt, but there is a veneer of reality on top, which is made believable by some great computer graphics.The operational word indeed is “suspension of disbelief“, which just doesn’t happen when Sivaji boomerangs a gun around a corner which fires on its own account to accentuate his style and power and eliminate his enemies at the same time, while making love to his lady the whole time and pocketing 40 crores for the movie. Intel could learn a few parallel-processing lessons from Rajnikanth, and be entertaining and stylish in its own way while at it. Hope Nehalem proves me wrong, but that’s another topic altogether.

In this age where even characters generated on the computer can emote better than Aishwarya Rai (a la Ice Age’s now extinct Mammoth), Kamalahasan, one of the foremost exponents of Indian method acting and one of the actors I rate highly, ended up making a movie with an excess of make up, which barely allowed him to emote when wearing make up in most of his roles, the only exception being the lead role.

Kamal’s latest fare, Dasavatharam is hyped, and why not. Some reviewer on Rediff or some other website called it an egomaniac’s fart, probably in the hope that the already controversial movie would have more to contend with, given its weak storyline. Strong words indeed, and justified if you come from an arthouse movies background. Which makes me wonder why the arthouse movie folks are anal retentive about clean entertainment like Sivaji or Dasavatharam. Sure, art house films improve our sensitivity and can be a joy to watch. Having said that, there is something about the beaten track which makes it the beaten track and which makes it fun. I will never know for sure whether the movie is fun, until I watch the movie of course, but this post is spurred by the theme of the movie, and the methods he has used to sell a “novel” storyline to a luddite, slowly progressing movie audience.

Culture and movies reinforce each other, in that the reception that popular movies get in a society determine some of the general views on various aspects of life as portrayed by movies. When one studies the movies a culture likes, one can sometimes get an idea of what goes down well in the collective movie goer’s alimentary canal and what causes collective unpleasant esophageal contractions, so to speak. The themes in the really big Tamil movies have often been the very same egomaniac’s farts that Kamal is accused of giving vent to. I do not blame him for trying this method, and instead laud him for some of the novelty that has apparently crept into this movie, despite some very palpable failures (especially the George W Bush get up, Kamal’s version of him looked appalling).

Kamal has done something quietly behind the hype of Dasavatharam - he has popularized a storyline loosely based on popular science, something that hasn’t had this much of an impact on the general public before. Sadly, he has the storyline botched up a bit, only to make it acceptable to enough people. He has made the movie popular by making the audience lose sight of the story altogether, and witness him in his various avatars (10) instead. Novelty in storylines is hard to come by in Indian cinema, although Indian cinema is arguably more vibrant than Hollywood in some ways, although Hollywood’s movie technicians are usually spot on and its storylines are generally more taut.

With budgets rising across the globe for movies like Dasavatharam, it is unsurprising that the visual quality of Hollywood is slowly being usurped by Indian and Chinese movies. India’s movie industry is huge in the number of movies, by Hollywood standards, although the budgets are more modest when you make a direct comparison. Having said that, movies like Dasavatharam are a reminder that the movie industry in India, especially in the south, is alive and kicking. With all the money flowing through and with a slow cultural change sweeping the youth, it is unsurprising that popular science terms like Chaos Theory turn up in a Tamil Blockbuster of all movies. While it is admittedly Kamal’s acting and ten roles have apparently drawn the crowds to the theatres more than anything else, it is possible that there is a slow change in the audience’s sensitivity to science-fiction based themes in movies. Indeed, it is possible that the two reinforce each other.

It is interesting to see that countries seen as economically prospering find the prospect of science fiction movies more interesting than other nations. Russia’s Solyaris (1973), Hollywood’s many science fiction movies over the past decades and Germany’s Metropolis (in 1927, spearheading the world into science fiction) were all conceptions of the popular art of those cultures in times when scientific ideas were being accepted more and more, but were surely germinating in the young and inquisitive minds of then. India is always a different nation from these, however, since it is such a heady mix of cultures, of different religions and classes, of people of various extractions and stocks and of remarkable, accelerated progress in recent times, especially in its urban centres. All this pushes any important Indian movie reflect the whole gamut of the themes mentioned above or perhaps a few of them, skilfully combined with a theme and characters and content. A watershed change in the quality of Indian (especially Tamil) movies happened, with Mani Ratnam’s Kannathil Muthamittal. I regard it as the best movie in the Tamil language in recent times.

However, the analyst in me sees meaning in the success of the big stars and of Sivaji or Dasavatharam. Not for the purism of a science fiction movie or its uniqueness in the current crop, but because of the usually more interesting cultural implications of such popular movies. A little like if you were to compare the cultural impact of 2001: A Space Odyssey against Arnold Schwarzenneger’s Terminator. The former is a classic science fiction flick, in many senses more accurate than the latter, although the latter has more entertainment value over a larger cross section of the audience, and ironically the movie that managed to squeeze the most charisma out of Schwarzenneger, in his role as a robot.

“Dr” Kamal (the doctor without a formal education) is a phenomenon in the Tamil industry for the decades he has put through superb performances in various movies, and I am sure that Dasavatharam is pretty well acted out for the roles he has done. There will be the quirks and teething problems when emoting through makeup, etc., and how excusable these are, given the budget, is a pertinent question. However, what Dasavatharam has done is to put the Indian brand of movies, with their songs, swagger, their flaws and quirks, their unique style, their actors and actresses, on the map. I wish to see gaudy Telugu movies running in theatres worldwide not because I am Telugu (I am not, FYI), but because our movie audience can become sensitized to new themes, as crazy as they already are.

I’d have wished that Kannathil Muthamittal, being the classic that it is, were taken notice of more than this new movie, but alas, the sentiments of my countrymen can’t afford that. In the hope that some of that Indian (Tamil) excellence in movies trickles through in this flow of talent that Kamal puts on the screen, I declare Dr. Kamal and Mr. Hype to be a redoubtable combination for their Dasavatharam performance. There is now better reason for hype with Kamal than with other actors - his excellent acting, not withstanding his fairly large fan following, and his success in a recently hyped movie. I only wish all Kamal movies were hyped (as Harrison Ford’s movies nearly always are), because had a movie like Anbe Sivam been so hyped, its theme could have touched many more.

Quotes on Vegetarianism

“Nonviolence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all living beings, we are all savages.”

Thomas Edison, inventor

“A dead cow or sheep lying in a pasture is recognized as carrion. The same sort of carcass dressed and hung up in a butcher’s stall passes as food!”

J. H. Kellog

The very emphasis of the commandment: Thou shalt not kill, makes it certain that we are descended from an endlessly long chain of generations of murderers, whose love of murder was in their blood as it is perhaps also in ours.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unhappy but hardly fit for life.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

More quotes at Stephen Knapp’s website.

The Return of the Benevolent

I spent the better part of today watching and ruminating on a movie titled Adi Shankara. The movie is about the great seer who lived many centuries ago and propounded the Advaita philosophy, united various Hindu belief streams and brought a new religious revolution to the masses, laying the foundations of the Bhakti movement. The movie is quite interesting and entirely in Sanskrit. The latter was a feature I much appreciated, since I love to listen to the Devabhasha being spoken. The movie presents various instances from Shankaracharya’s life in sequence, starting with his birth and early intellectual development, his iconoclasm and depicts events in his life that had a bearing on his philosophical thought.

A feature of the movie was that it included the “erosion” of social structure and values in India at Shankara’s time, which, I am not educated enough to comment on. I can certainly posit that this could have been an afterthought on the part of G V Iyer who directed the film and could have been included in the story as an illustration or allegory to the current moral erosion of Indian society. I wish to clarify that I think this erosion, per me, was a slow process, as is all change. As a social precedent, the introduction of rival religions such as Buddhism and Jainism in the pre-Mauryan period seems to be the turning point for Vedic religion.

An instance in the movie shows a curious but faltering Brahmin scholar, Kumarila Bhatta, learning Buddhist principles incognito from a teacher, yet harbouring sympathy for Vedic religion, expresses his dismay at his Buddhist teacher’s flailing of Vedic religion, only to be kicked out unceremoniously from his school. To win back confidence in Vedic religion, he defeats his former teacher (the Buddhist Monk) in a dialectic, but is ashamed at his own caprice, that he had the nerve to learn Buddhist principles and yet defy his own teacher, and as a result, practices self-immolation to atone for his sin. This extreme step is strangely illustrative of one aspect of the morality of Pre-Buddhist and Pre-Jain India - the steadfast purity of principles that Vedic belief propounded has been eroded by less capricious beliefs that followed in the wake of late Vedic religion.

Shankaracharya, who approaches this scholar before he self-immolates, is witness to this benevolence and righteousness. Shankara preaches this benevolence in his most famous work, the Bhajagovindam.

Austerity alone does not provide a full picture of benevolence and righteous living. Another aspect is the aesthetic aspect of benevolence. Shankara’s dialectic is often juxtaposed with objective examinations of reality, pathos for the suffering around him and in general, the advocation of what is in principle, correct. When he falls at a Chaandala’s feet (Chaandalas were untouchables in Ancient India) in acknowledgement of the words of truth he spoke, and in acknowledgement of his mistake in asking the Chaandala to leave the premises of a temple he entered, he stands by his principles.

Yet another aspect of benevolence, is, strangely, death. The impending sense of death that haunts Shankaracharya’s existence as a metaphor for the passing into another realm with account for one’s actions in this world, is an interesting one, that seems to have been initiated in him by his father, who softens the blow of his loss on his son, when he remarks that Death is a friend of his, and that he should embrace it. Soon after saying this, his father passes away, while little Shankara looks on him calmly. There is something very pragmatic about this view of death, which most of us today would be intelligent to adopt. These scenes of the movie really have to be seen to be understood, because the philosophical and intellectual depth they convey can otherwise be made to look very trivial by my writing this here. Shankara and his companions smile at each other in much the same way when Shankara’s mother passes away soon after his arrival from his tours as a sanyasin (saint).

Of all the ancient philosophies, I have found the Indian view on death to be the most well developed understanding of a passing to a beyond, where the actions of this world are accounted for. There is something elegant and profound about the comfort one has in realizing something so fundamental.

There are poignant instances of a young Shankara facing his father’s funeral pyre to the verses:

AkAshAt patitam tOyam yathA gacchati sAgaram
sarva dEva namaskArah kEshavam pratigacchati

(as raindrops falling from the sky all ultmately meet their end in the ocean, prayer to all gods ultimately goes to Lord Keshava).

The movie shows the verse in a multitude of intellectual positions, referring also to the bane of human existence and also to the cycles of birth and death that are so part of Hindu theology.

The movie shows the evolution of Shankara in a variegated society of people who speak Sanskrit, vernaculars such as Tamil and Malayalam, and who share beliefs such as Sanatana Dharma (simply, Shankara’s own belief system based on the Vedas, a subset of which is Advaita), Buddha-Dharma and Jina-Dharma (Buddhism and Jainism, in modern parlance), and also amongst those who disagree with him on how the Vedas should be interpreted, or whether language and grammar have a bearing on one’s understanding of life’s workings from the standpoint of Sanatana Dharma. (Sampraapte sannihite kaale nahi nahi rakshati dun-krun-karane ; “In one’s time of reckoning, grammar does not protect one”).

I do not want to comment on the movie itself, because by the technical standards of movies that we see in the theatres today, this 1982 movie is surely short of technical achievement. However, technical achievement is only one aspect of a movie. Much of a movie’s effect is in its messages, its characters and the ideas presented in the movie. By these yardsticks, Adi Shankara is surely one of the better movies I have seen. To elaborate further, I haven’t seen any others in Sanskrit.

Given my current intellectual and religious confusion that probably stems from the confusion in my life’s value systems in general, I find this movie to be an important thing, because it seems to reinforce the benevolent values in me. I have seen myself soften over the last two years, to charity, introspection, kindness and righteousness and I find myself reinforced in my own beliefs each time I tap into small parts of the vast swathes of my culture’s illustrious ethical and intellectual past.

I worry sometimes whether I am allowing my set of values to get eroded by the same waters that wreak havoc on societies around this globalized world, and hope for a space at times, where no one will disturb me and where I can understand the world at my own pace and ruminate and sublimate on the things I observe and continue to observe. Sometimes, the coffee shops and malls help, with their burgeoning crowds, but most of the time I find myself reluctant to the idea that it is possible for me to reconcile the religious beliefs I am drawn to, coupled with their severe austerity, my own ego pointing towards my material achievement and other important things, like being steadfast to something that is an organic combination of my culture and my lineage.

At other times, illusions of success stemming from radicalism haunt me, and at other times, I seem as misled as I can ever hope to be, accepting things contrary to what I believe, in the hope that by relaxing my standards, I may reconcile them. I seem to be at a crossroads now where editing out the things I need, is a necessary stage before expanding to new horizons. I hope the new found benevolence breeds in me the love needed to achieve resolution on these fronts.

Updates

So here I am in New York (not the city, unfortunately and fortunately). It’s another project, and I have been here for a few weeks now. The culture out here is very different from where I worked before this, and I must say I have been having some fun here - the work is right up my alley, and it is pretty interesting to do design projects again.

I haven’t ventured out that much because of the lack of an apartment to stay in as yet - I stay in an Inn right now, and am yet to rent a car out here. The former is 90% done since I have hunted out a good place to live. I need only wait until the landlord delivers the apartment to me. Fortunately for me the apartment is next door to where I stay. Imagine that I took weeks to hunt this one out! Once I do these two things I should be all set!

I have a feeling I have to learn a lot more to have a strong foothold here unlike in my previous project where I could have managed the work rather easily on account of what I knew. Looking forward to all the learning coming up!

Souvenir

I discovered an old souvenir that my grandfather gave me, when packing to move to New York. I am going there on a new project. My grandfather scribbled in his near illegible handwriting, but in perfect English, on a half-torn, white, LML Limited envelope. Inside this envelope, marked 20.2.2007, was a five hundred rupee note, with a short letter written in Tamil, addressed to my parents. It was a list of things that he wished for them to do. I know I will never spend the five hundred rupees he gave me. My old grandfather is one of the people I am proud of knowing - being as old as he is, he is incredibly active and sharp of intellect and wit. There’s some kind of connection he sees with me, which I haven’t discovered yet. Perhaps I had been foolish to assume that he was not as emotionally dependent on his children and his grandchildren as he really was. He was widowed and then remarried in his day, and fathered twelve children from his wives, none of who have done really badly in life, which is saying something. An old man, of another time, with nothing but aspirations for his grandchildren, I remember the kind things he always told me, so enthusiastically and loudly, in his booming voice. I have grown from being a shy little boy to n introspective young man in his eyes - there is some pride I sense in him for my family. Thanks, gramps. I will try to do you proud. How I would love to come and meet you when I get home in August!

Intellectual Failures

At twenty three, I learnt all about logical fallacies, from my little room in Bangalore, dedicating time to learn argumentative logic each evening for a couple of weeks. The fascination with logic and logical fallacies always remained strong, since sifting out untruths is sometimes as important as gaining access to a truth.

At twenty five, I was inspired again, when bothered about the significant power than my boss seem to hold in getting me to pander to some of his ideas about aircraft design. I realized that more than having an informed opinion through some serious reflection upon his experiences, he was appealing to his own sense of style, correctness, form and certain functions he deemed important in these designs. Naturally, it took me a few iterations of these events to see through his ideas, and thankfully I did, eventually. But it was too late.

At twenty six, I started reading Goedel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. A wonderful book, it opened me up to languages, logic, thinking as it has evolved, the mind, and other matters of philosophy and metaphysics. My mind itself seemed to conspire in this at some level, so much so that the failures I have had came back to me and danced in my mind, as if they were frothing bubbles on a calm sea. When twenty six, I also read Jorge Luis Borges, who was quite an inspiration and remains one, all things considered.

At twenty seven, on another project in another country and with hopes of aerospace design nearly severed, I contemplated on the nature of my failures and successes again, once intrigued by The Society of Mind by Marvin Minsky. These lessons were in vain, I simply couldn’t teach myself any more. I considered leaving this place, as I had considered before. After all, what did I need then, but for someone to take care of me, while I pondered on these things, learned ever more about the world, and wrote it all down?

Today, I revisited the subject of logical fallacies again, without heed to the language it was all written in, with heed to the concepts presented in it. I shall post more on the subject soon. This is a crucial phase now, a turn of the tide, so to speak. Now I find myself within some reach of one goal, although many more have mushroomed since I introspected last. Thankfully, the situation leaves me alone enough to think. I look forward to being fascinated again.

An Observation on Personal Hygiene

Here is an observation made on my penultimate day of work in Rochester, a la Ambrose Bierce:

America is a country where people want to make offices paperless, so that they may use all the paper they saved in their toilets, during their micturition and other routines.

Much associated humour, including many noteworthy observations, from Maami.

Lakshmi: Thanks for correcting the spelling of “micturation”

Cheeni Kum

I don’t know if I have written about this movie before: I didn’t even bother to check. I have to admit that I am no huge fan of Hindi movies - I watch the occasional good Hindi movie, but I do enjoy good movies in whatever language. Having watched Japanese, Iranian (Arabic), Jewish and French movies, Hindi was not even half-a-step away: it is essentially native, given that I am from India, albeit from South India. Too often have I come across Tamils who don’t share any erudition in Hindi movies and music as if it was somehow a blasphemy and as if all of them descended from The-Great-Tamil-Agnostic-Anti-Sanskritists themselves. Enough of that, however, since I have deviated enough from the topic at hand.

Suitably, however, I find that the music in Cheeni Kum is an odd remix of Ilayaraja’s old tunes by the man himself. I admire Ilayaraja’s music and most his stuff in Tamil reeks of class (I have listened to a lot of TFM), as do the few albums he has directed in other southern languages. However, I haven’t sampled Raja’s music against the backdrop of the newer, fresher tunes of A R Rahman, like Khwaja mere Khwaja and Manmohana playing from my room mate’s computer all day, and against the modern backdrop of The Great Indian Bollywood Movie Machine that is sold on bringing polished movies to the public which sometimes have less content than their facades seem to indicate.

Sadly, Cheeni Kum seems to be sliding down this very slippery slope. Strong performances come from both Amitabh and Tabu, with Paresh Raval  “chipping in” (to use an already overused and overrated, neo-Indo-British Ravi Shastri cliche to describe a painfully ordinary cricket fan’s character with an overburdened sense of humour. At least that is a better cliche than Navjot Singh Sidhu’s mindless banter, though admittedly less entertaining.)

The subject of the movie is of course the very palpable love of a really old guy for a middle aged, hot, unmarried woman, the latter of course being Tabu, who looks a distinct 3 years or so younger than a comparable urban 34 year old software engineer with no dark circles under the eyes, a body to match her beautiful face and the hard-to-ignore non-vegetarianism, mockery, gumption, etc., that comes with being highly educated, jobless, lonely and surrounded by too many ugly looking white guys, all at the same time. That, somehow, is Neena Varma. And she seems to hold so many secrets!

Buddhadev (not the aging Bhattacharya) is Amitabh’s angry old man portrayed to perfection as a hypocritical vegetarian cook who runs an Indian restaurant in London, who has an overbearing mother well past her time, who is punctillious about cooking and who is strangely bent on having dinner at his own home every evening.

They meet at Buddhadev’s restaurant (where else) and in a cocktail of inefficient, smarting cooks, egos and cooking recipes flying about and umbrellas being traded on believably consecutive rainy days in London, get to know each other better and better, until Amitabh works up the courage to ask Tabu out. That, to me, is when the fun starts.

Amitabh Bachchan is frankly very old in this movie, not even passably old to make his role appear believable. Having said that, his performance is to be commended. He may still be attractive to some women here and there, given his disposition in the movie and the way he carries himself.

Tabu is undoubtedly hot and something about her character accentuates her beauty. And she seems to hold so many secrets! Enough said.

Flowing hair, deep sarcasm, portrayals of a strange intimacy, the little girl  nicknamed”sexy”, classic Ilayraja tunes from Mouna Ragam (Tamil) and Geetha (Kannada) rehashed for this movie, are all nice parts of this movie. the Spice6 restaurant’s cheeky humour and the rest are all fun. Amitabh’s “chatri” scene is funny. There is actually some good chemistry between Amitabh and Tabu in places: I grudgingly have to admit that. Having said that, the scenes where Amitabh meets Paresh Raval are overdone, pretty badly done and border on being laughable.

On a different note, with two Lolita-style movies coming out with Amitabh starring in them (Nishabd and Cheeni Kum: I am late to the party as ever, in mentioning them), one wonders if the old guy - young girl thing is a new fangled social trend of some sort (gasp). Young Indian men, gird your loins, because here come the old Indian men, if Buddhadev is anything to go by!