07.30.06

Movies Reviewed: Two Must-Sees from Bollywood

Posted in Bollywood, Movies at 3:47 pm by Moody

Veer-Zaara: Drama, Musical/Perfoming Arts; 2004; Unrated; 3h 16m. Recommended.

~ and ~

Devdas: Drama, Musical/Perfoming Arts; 2002; PG; 3h 02m. Recommended.

On a warm day, not so long ago, I decided almost on a whim to visit our local Indian store. It is a place that sells Indian foods, ingredients, spices, drinks, henna, etc., and also carries movies to rent or purchase. It is a good place, a place that smells delightfully of patchouli and other spices even before you’ve reached the door. On the day I visited, the couple who (I believe) own the store were working behind the cluttered counter. The jam-packed store was cool and shaded, the lighting was subdued for a convenience store, and the atmosphere was comforting, welcoming. Still, they looked at me almost apprehensively, perhaps wondering why I happened into their store. I’m a typical, middle-aged caucasion guy in appearance, and I didn’t head directly for anything. I probably looked like a misplaced tourist. But all I needed to do was say that I was interested in their video collection, that I wanted to know what Bollywood films they, as Indians, would recommend, and suddenly there were smiles. The man, who appeared to be in his late fifties or early sixties, was pleased to start pulling down movies for me to look at. He gave me a dozen recommendations and told me that those were only the first to come to his mind. He asked me questions about what I was interested in, helping me to narrow down my choices to a few choice selections.

[image]Out of the twelve laid before me, I walked out with what I could afford: one movie: Veer-Zaara (starring Shahrukh Khan as Veer Pratap Singh, and Preity Zinta as Zaara Hayaat Khan). Kisha and I watched it that day and both absolutely loved it. Now, it was in fact my first Bollywood film. Until then, I’d seen bits and pieces of other films, mainly in documentaries about Indian cinema, but I’d never watched one. So I didn’t know what to expect, really, however much I figured I’d enjoy the experience. Fact is, I was blown away.

Veer-Zaara is an epic love story. A handsome Indian man, a squadron leader in the Indian Air Force, falls in love with a beautiful Pakistani girl after rescuing her from the scene of a bus accident. After falling for her, as she struggles against falling in love with him, Veer finds out that she is already promised to another by her father, who hopes to improve his political position. He struggles against his love for her, but ultimately neither can deny it. After their love is exposed by an act of transcendent courage, Veer winds up in prison in Pakistan, condemned to silence for the rest of his life lest he bring shame down on Zaara and her family. But Veer finally does tell his story to a lawyer, Saamiya Siddiqui (played by the lovely Rani Mukherjee), who, as a woman, is fighting to prove herself in the name of women everywhere. We first meet Veer in prison, twenty years after everything went wrong. The story that unfolds is both uplifting and heart-breaking, and the ending will…. Well, I’ll leave that to you to discover. Musically, the movie is a delight, transporting and fun, serious and moving. It took me a little time to get used to the Indian style of singing (”How do they get their voices to sound like that?”), but I came around quickly and can now say I truly love it. The music and dancing make a wonderful medium for conveying emotion and promoting the story’s tone, and they are, of course, completely in keeping with the Indian mise en scène. This is typical of Bollywood fare. Or, as the young Indian man in the store told me with a chuckle and smile the next time I came in for a movie, “All Bollywood movies have that!”

[image]And so it was true for Devdas (starring Shahrukh Khan as Devdas Mukherjee, Madhuri Dixit as Chandramukhi, and Aishwarya Rai as Parvati [’Paro’]). The songs throughout the movie are some of the most lovely, poignant, bittersweet and ecstatic I’ve heard.

Though this was to be a much different movie in other ways, one thing is also true between it and Veer-Zaara: it is truly epic in scope. Even richer in color and dance, Devdas (which was an Official Selection at Cannes in 2002, the first Indian move to be so honored) is Shakespearean through and through where its plot is concerned, and it pulls this off magnificently well. Romeo & Juliet comes to mind, naturally enough, because the film is loosely based on the play. That said, it should be obvious that this movie is thoroughly in the genre of tragedy. It is, perhaps, the Bollywood equivalent of Julie Taymor’s Titus, though not nearly so bloody or violent.

The plot, in short, is that Devdas and Paro were childhood friends whose love grew strong, but Devdas was sent away for ten years to England for his education. When he returns, he has changed, grown in some ways but in others has become distant. As Paro and he rediscover their love, Devdas’s family plot to undermine the young lovers because their classes are different. Paro’s family are “bride sellers” and Devdas’s family are landlords, and love is no bridge between the two so far as Devdas’s family are concerned. Through a series of unfortunate events and missteps, Devdas loses Paro. She is married off to an aristocrat who will never love her, and Devdas finds his way into a bottle, spurning the love of a courtesan who’s heart opens to him in his despair. Kisha and I literally clung to each other as the momentum of the film picked up toward its breathtaking end. I get goosebumps just thinking about its final scenes.

You owe it to yourself, as a lover of movies, to check both of these classic Bollywood films out. You won’t be dissappointed. You might, in fact, fall in love.

07.22.06

Chalk Dust on a Sound Board

Posted in Music at 12:02 am by Moody

Thom Yorke: The Eraser

[image]The first don’t-call-it-a-solo album from Radiohead frontman, Thom Yorke, could be considered fittingly titled. It is apparent — based on reviews of recent performances by the band — that Radiohead’s sound is in some sort of transition. When it comes, fans may expect a new direction or some form of evolution from the band. But The Eraser is in keeping, directionally, with the last three albums the full band have released.

This is not a failing, per se. Yorke has provided a solid album of pretty much exactly the kind of music you’d probably like to hear from him (though minus Jonny Greenwood’s more distinctive marks). His work falls between and is reminiscent of Plaid’s and Lullatone’s, and, as noted by another reviewer, there are elements of Autechre in the mix. Sounds are chopped up, sliced, diced, mixed in a big bowl, and served with dry wine and vinegar attitude and the silky goat cheese dressing that is Yorke’s unmistakable, now-plaintive/now-wry voice, though certainly Yorke stretches his voice this time around, which is a welcome thing. His voice is lovely, ethereal, pained, bored — and, regardless of the mood, always on cue, even when the mood drifts into the realm of the droll, which it does infrequently.

All of this to say that The Eraser is a good album, a nice addition to the Radiohead collection you’ll never sell, but it is not an obviously innovative or bloody brilliant album. No, it is simply better than anything that, say, Chris Martin could put out.

Perhaps what we are hearing is Yorke erasing the solid line of progression Radiohead were following, the formula that they had been working with for some while. Perhaps The Eraser is here to sweep away what we’ve previously heard from the full band. If so, it is a fitting way to close a chapter in the band’s career, leaving us all ready and hungry for the next.

I leave it to others to discuss the merits of the cover art (and jigsaw puzzles), the somewhat typically (if not pretentiously) “clever” official site, and why it is that iTunes carries Yorke’s don’t-call-it-a-solo album but none of Radiohead’s. Such (potential) issues don’t add anything to the enjoyment, value, or quality of the album, so far as I am concerned, and did not affect my review.

07.17.06

Nearing Forty Years

Posted in Personal at 11:30 am by Moody

[image]Life will not be what you expect. That’s what I’ve learned. Two days before my 40th birthday and I realize that I am not anywhere near who I thought I’d be or where I’d expected to be. Re-reading old entries here (old by date, not by quantity), I already feel the distance. My life has already moved on, moved forward. Memories have become more nuanced with new experiences or have been deepened by similar experiences.

Sometimes of late, I’m really just not sure what’s going on with me. Somehow, I thought 40 would not be a big deal. I already felt so old for any number of reasons. At 35, I thought that five more years would not make much of a difference. But after my second divorce, after finding and settling into a new and totally different relationship, after getting the job I’ve now held for a year, after seeing financial disaster descend despite my best efforts, I came to see that five years is a hell of a long time in terms of the potential for significant events.

Strange to think that, when I was a teen and twenty-something, I thought I’d be dead by now. So many times I wished I was; I was nearly always unhappy. I lived my life fast and loose and didn’t really care what happened. It all seemed bad at its root. But Kisha nailed it when she said that I am, at heart and despite myself, an optimist of the most romantic variety. And that fact says this about me: I really do believe, in my inmost self, that life is good. And I do. I admit it. I can’t help it. Nature vs. Nurture…. When it comes to me and my sense of what’s good? I don’t know which way to rule on that, so I’ll just say it’s probably a combination of the two and consider that good enough.

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07.16.06

Movie: Rabbit-Proof Fence

Posted in Movies, Politics at 9:21 pm by Moody

[image]Drama, Based on a True Story; 2002; Rated “PG” for emotional thematic material; 1h 33m. Recommended.

A beautifully filmed movie of a poignant, difficult, true story, Rabbit-Proof Fence follows three so-called “half-caste” Aboriginal girls — Molly Craig, age 14, Daisy Kadibill, age 10, and Gracie Fields, age eight — as they flee their captors, making their way across 1,500 miles of the Australian Outback to return home and to their family. The movie occasionally cuts to scenes inside the government office where, as the three attempted to make their way home, the “Chief Protector of Aborigines”, the white man behind the policy, A.O. Neville, continued to sell his racist policy of eugenics and attempted to locate and recapture the girls.

Based on the book by Doris Pilkington (who also goes by the name Nugi Garimara), daughter of Molly Craig, the movie mainly takes place in the early 1930s when the government of Western Australia was following what could reasonably be called a genocidal policy designed to “assimilate” the “half-caste” Aboriginies into “white culture”. “Full blood” Aborigines were generally not considered to be the issue. A.O. Neville believed that the “full blood” Aborigines were “dying out”. Neville believed that if a “half-caste” were to breed with a full-blooded “white”, then the “half-caste’s” offspring would be more “white” than “black”. After enough breeding, the descendants of the original “half-caste” would be purely “white” — in other words, they would have been successfully assimilated, their “blackness” would have been bred out of them and destroyed.

Assimilation aimed to absorb mixed-descent Aboriginal people into mainstream Australian society. The report of the 1937 conference stated, ‘the destiny of the natives of aboriginal origin, but not of the full blood, lies in their ultimate absorption by the people of the Commonwealth and it therefore recommends that all efforts be directed to that end.’ Policy-makers expected that mixed-descent Aborigines would assimilate. They thought that the ‘white blood’ in mixed-descent Aborigines enabled them to be educated in European ways. [More: Source]

Although this may not sound like the typcial definition of a genocidal policy — we are not talking about wholesale slaughter, after all — the end results of it are equivalent. The flagrantly racist rationale behind the policy instituted by the government certainly did not favor the long-term survival of the Aboriginies as a unique and historically self-determining group, and, successfully implemented, would very likely have spelled an end to them.

More information about the policy and its results may be found at the HREOC Website: “Bringing them home: The ‘Stolen Children’ report“. See also the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Act 2005 and the Apology for further information and links. I hope that you’ll join me in taking some time to read up on what happened in Australia. Like many people who live far from Australia, I imagine, I was not at all fully cognizant of what the indigenous populations of Australia and the Torres Strait suffered at the hands of those of European descent who “colonized” and “settled” their lands. I was dimly aware that there had been a great amount of conflict over the years, and that tensions remained to this day, occasionally acted upon to hurtful consequence. However, I was mostly ignorant of the history, and of that I am ashamed. The full story is so much deeper and so much more difficult. Rabbit-Proof Fence does an excellent job of pointing that out. It is important that such histories are learned, in hopes that they’ll not be repeated… anywhere, by anyone.

07.08.06

Movie: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

Posted in Movies at 10:17 am by Moody

[image]Action/Adventure; 2006; Rated “PG-13” for intense sequences of adventure violence, including frightening images; 2h 30m. Recommended.

The line for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest was long for the Midnight showing, the theaters it was showing in were packed by a diverse (though mostly young) crowd, many decked out in some form of pirate attire, and no wonder — we are talking about the return of the cheeky and inimitable Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), along with that much tried couple, Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley). It looked to be a hit in the making, and in my opinion it deserves to be, other reviews be damned to the briny depths after a long keelhauling, yarrr.

Look, I’m not about to tell you that PotC: DMC, Pirates 2 for short, is brilliant or better than the first in the series. Nor am I going to say that it’s perfect, if we are speaking in terms of hardcore movie criticism. But that’s just it: Pirates 2, like its predecessor, is not intended to be a hardcore movie-lover’s movie. Depp, Bloom and Knightley do not fail to satisfy us even though they are not given much development, because the movie is a romp, a ride, a reason to whoop and have fun on a summer day. There’s no reason for an in-depth critique. Just watch some of your favorite actors do their thing in the fantasy world of pirates and relax! The plot is straightforward enough (not “unfocused”, as some have accused it of being), the action is fairly non-stop and its sequences are well-choreographed, and the eye-candy, as many have noted, is as abundant as pieces of candy corn on Halloween.

Pirates 2 introduces a lot of in-jokes and references to the Disney ride. References and in-jokes as they are, people unfamilar with the ride will not “get” them. But, then again, viewers don’t really need to; the references and in-jokes are not essential to “understanding” the movie, whatever that could mean. Like the ride, the movie rolls along through its scenes with the precision one finds in a good ride. It is, to an extent, formulaic that way. But so are a lot of better-known dances, and folks usually don’t complain that the steps are, in themselves, lacking. Folks complain when the dancers are lacking talent or panache or straightforward skill. So, let this be said. The actors in Pirates 2 do not improvise or introduce anything new to the formula of the movie, but they are good at their roles and deliver the steps without stumbles or faux pas. Their goal is to entertain, and that they do. After laughing and cheering throughout, the audience we sat in applauded at the end of the movie (which is, I daresay, quite a cliffhanger). We applauded as well, and left the theater feeling like we’d been adequately entertained. We’d had fun.

07.07.06

Astronomy Domain

Posted in Astronomy, Science at 4:05 pm by Moody

[image]Occasionally, you run across a useful, powerful, fun and educational application that just wows you with its strengths, with all the thought that went into it, and with its ease of use. The good feelings are increased even further when you get to download and use it for free, with no restrictions. It’s enough to make you feel a little better about human beings. Stellarium is just such a program, virtually guaranteed to put stars in your eyes… along with galaxies, planets, and more. As per the official wiki,

Stellarium is an open source desktop planetarium for Linux/Unix, Windows and MacOSX. It renders the skies in realtime using OpenGL, which means the skies will look exactly like what you see with your eyes, binoculars, or a small telescope. Stellarium is very simple to use, which is one of its biggest advantages: it can easily be used by beginners. The Stellarium project was started by Fabien Chéreau during the summer of 2001 and uses Sourceforge intensively.

[image]It’s a lot of fun to use, too. I spent some time playing with the numerous configuration options, available through a toolbar at the bottom-left of the screen. I changed the background scene, toggled equatorial and azimuthal grids, looked at constellations with background illustrations, and went forward faster and faster in time (which, by the way, will quickly show you, in a few seconds, how the sky changes seasonally, even daily).

If, however, you are not interested in downloading this excellent program for your computer, there is a nice option for you. The online Neave Planetarium, although simpler in appearance and with less features generally, will still satisfactorily allow you to explore and identify the stars above.

Both applications allow you to input your latitude and longitude (with some limitations). If you are, like I was, ignorant of your latitudinal and longitudinal coördinates, then you can remedy that by inputting your zip code at the U.S. Census page here. Once you have, and you begin to look around at all those stars, you might want to get even more perspective.

Hakan’s Space Balls will give you a strong visual idea of the difference in size between, say, our own star (Sol, with it’s diameter of 1,390,000 km/864,000 miles) and Sirius (with a diameter almost twice that of the sun). As a side note, Antares, a massive red giant, is about 700 times larger than our sun. That really is bigger than one can readily imagine (it would, in place of our sun, swallow the inner four planets).

Scale is an interesting thing. Size and distance, space and time, tell us a lot. One of the best illustrations of such scales is the famous Powers of 10 (official Website). Another, interactive, version is here. The Powers of 10 movie was even parodied on The Simpsons.