Life of Pi revisited

Umm... guess what.. Life of Pi is being made into a movie. And by none other than Manoj 'Night' Shyamalan! It's a strange tale being adapted by a director who's known for telling strange tales. In case you have missed my previous ramblings about Pi, it's the extremely strange story of a boy, Piscine 'Pi' Patel, collector of religions and lover of animals who leaves his hometown Pondicherry in India to emigrate to Canada. His father who owns the local zoo sells the inhabitants to zoos around the world and departs with his family and a cargo of wild animals to Canada, but fate has it otherwise and 'Pi' finds himself adrift in the ocean in a lifeboat with the supremely enjoyable company of an orang-utan, an injured zebra, a hungry wolf and a 400 pound Bengal Tiger!

Soon nature has it's way and the wolf makes a nice dinner out of the zebra and the orang-utan, while the tiger shows the wolf its place (in the tiger's belly) so that our hero is left with the tiger for company. A strange tale indeed! It gets stranger as 'Pi' spends nine months on the ocean with the tiger without becoming another dinner, using his intelligence and knowledge of the ways of the tiger! Yann Martel concludes the story in a stranger fashion where 'Pi' narrates an alternate (and boring) story to officials when he reaches land and you are left wondering which tale is true, or whether either one of them is the true one.

I can't wait to see how Shyamalan adapts this tale.

[If you love the magic realism you find in Life of Pi, read Gabriel Garcia Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude. It's one of the most superb books ever written!]

How to Get Hooked to Bollywood

As a person who's completely addicted to movies,I loved reading about one man's journey from total ignorance of Indian cinema to being a complete fan of that wacky, irreverant and completely alien genre of movies. Richard Corliss wrote a piece in Time during the Oscars about the foreign-language films that were nominated.

"The usual ignorance attended the selections for Best Foreign-Language Film. Except for ‘Amelie' and ‘No Man's Land,' the foreign pictures that earned most critics' plaudits were absent. In their place we got an Argentine melodrama (‘Son of the Bride'), a Norwegian film about an insane couple (‘Elling') and a four-hour Indian film about cricket (‘Lagaan'). If any of these turns out to be faaaabulous, I promise to apologize in this space"

That was before he received over 100 emails from aggreviated Indian readers which led him to watch Lagaan with 150 others like him in the Floating Film Festival. In his words, "To catch "Lagaan" with 150 movie sharpies who had never seen a Bollywood picture was to see snickers turn to smiles, and indulgence to rapture" I can understand the experience. Having watched the movie twice in theatres (and numerous other times on disc), I can testify that the experience was always the same. Now, Corliss knows more about bollywood than I do, so over to him!

A new spin on being tall

Okay, first there was this article in the NY Times about how the destinies of men are determined by how tall they are. Apparently being tall increases your chances of being successful and getting married. Now there's this study by a Univ. of Florida professor who found that tall people get paid more in their jobs than shorter people. Apparently, every inch of height adds $783 to your income! The study says that people have a tendency to 'look up to people they have to look up to'. Being tall increases your respectability and improves your job evaluations too. An interesting study of human nature and how perception shapes our view of reality.


[On the web: Richard Corliss of Time learns about bollywood and presents his 10 point guide to Indian cinema.]

Kill Bill

Tarantino is a fraud.
Quite obviously he enjoys making films. So much that he forgets that he has to show the movie at some point of time to actual people who are not privy to the thought processes in his mind that generated the narrative. He indulges himself to the point where you can almost imagine him sitting back with a smug expression and thinking how cool he is.

In Kill Bill, there are very few memorable dialogues a la Pulp Fiction since it is an action flick from the beginning to the end. The action scenes are beautifully choreographed and the last fight scene is particularly memorable as 'The Bride' Uma Thurman battles 'O-Ren Ishi' Lucy Liu in the snow garden. Uma Thurman is wonderful as ever and for once, Lucy Liu has a role which looks tailor-made for her. As the chieftan of the Yakuzi clan in Tokyo, she exudes a feeling of power and raw brutality. Tarantino loves to use opposites to create lasting effects.Check out the Nancy Sinatra track 'Bang Bang' which plays as the titles roll is an amazing track where a brutal story is told in a very soft and loving tone, or the character of one of Lucy Liu's henchwomen who dresses in charming schoolgirl outfits but is more brutal than anyone else.

For the fans of blood and gore - there's plenty. Every few minutes there's blood spouting from a severed neck or limbs flying or eyes being gouged out. Tarantino lays it so thick that instead of being revulsed by it, it looks almost comic. Which brings me to my main point - if the movie is so good, why complain?

Tarantino has made a modular film divided into chapters. He has taken great care to see that each scene is executed brilliantly and in a unique way, but the overall effect is like watching 20 MTV movies strung together. Each scene stretches the limits of your imagination to the point where you are unsure if the director assumes us to be moronic, or whether the director is simply playing the fool. Sometimes the characters seem almost cartoonish (accentuated by Lucy Liu's character who's given an entire chapter of anime to show her history.)
Particularly irritating is Tarantino's use of a condescending voiceover to tell the story which sounds like a parent narrating a story to a kid. Also whenever the characters open their mouths to speak (which is not often) the dialogues sound like they are trying awfully hard to be cool. Thankfully there is no monologue (like Samuel Jackson's in Pulp Fiction) but you wish some scenes would end a couple of minutes early.

So all you Tarantino fans out there - watch and decide for yourself - I saw it and I still can't decide if the movie is too good for me, or whether Tarantino has failed to pull a fast one on us this time.

Picking up...

Three weeks and no movies. That's not me, so off I went to see 'School of Rock' to correct that shameful situation. And dude, if you love rock, this IS the movie for you! Jack Black works magic with his ragtag bunch of 10 year olds who perform with a gusto that would stand up to the greats of rock.

Elsewhere, Salon reports about the shameful situation of 30+ year old virgins who are going into counselling to get back their self confidence and learn how to make intimate relationships. This particular therapist has 'clients from U.K., India, China and Australia' who come all the way to Los Angeles and spend up to $10,000 in therapy. (psst.. my $100 therapy would be to suggest a walk down the strip in Las Vegas - it's too hard not to get an offer to 'go to some place more comfortable..')

And now here's something I have to share with you. 1and1.com is offering a 'professional' package consisting of 500M of space and all the scripting features (php, perl, mysql, yada yada...) for the rock bottom price of... $0! Wha t I gathered from their pitch was that they used to serve only big customers and are now beginning to serve individuals, so this offer gives all the features of a professional package free for three years! Go for it guys... and if you need a cheap domain, get it from them or from other cheap place like godaddy. I wonder why register.com still charges $30 or so for a domain when you can get it for $6 on godaddy.

On a parting note, guess what kind of lamps I'd like to get for my house..

I'm back!!!!

Gawd, it's been a long time! I haven't written anything here since the semester started! Things kept happening and I just didn't find the time to write anything. Not for dearth of stuff to write about, mind you.. There's all the research (which I'm sure no one wants to listen to) and and all the new stuff I've been up to. Since my memory is so good, I can only remember things that happened in the past one week - and that includes a great trip to Vegas! Three awesome days in Vegas with an absolutely crazy bunch of guys (wait till I upload the pictures). So was I impressed by all the lights? No dammit, I didn't even get to see the strip! We must have hit a zillion clubs out there (and ahem..ahem.. a strip club too) so there was absolutely no time to see any other part of vegas. Guess I'll have to wait for another time.

Starting today.. the blog is back full stream and you'll get your daily dose of bullcrapocillin. (highly recommended for growing children).