4000 Kilograms of Awesome

I don't know if it's some sort of ingrained malayalee thing, but I love elephants, which is why these ads make me tear up like a professional onion chopper:

Striker Party on Google Wave and Everyone's Invited (While Invites Last)

This should be fun: Beth and other assorted Bollywood bloggers and fans are organizing a Striker watchalong this Sunday 7th January at 1 pm EST (10 pm local UAE time) on Google Wave. The film is being released worldwide on Youtube at the same time as it hits cinemas in India - for free in most places, though US viewers will have to shell out a not unreasonable $5. For more info on this event, you can follow #strikerwatchalong on twitter; if you want invites to Google Wave, leave a message with your e-mail address.

Ishqiya: Vishal Bharadwaj Can Do No Wrong

Khalujaan (Naseeruddin Shah) and his nephew Babban (Arshad Warsi) are on the run from their boss, Mushtaq Bhai. Khalujaan - real name Iftekhar, but no one calls him that  - is Mushtaq Bhai's wife's rakhi bhai , but given that he and his bhanja stole a bagful of money from him and left him tied to a chair, things aren't exactly cordial between them. With nowhere else to run, they decide to hide out with Khalujaan's old friend Verma in Gorakhpur, except Verma is dead, and his widow Krishna (Vidya Balan) agrees to put them up. Hijinks - romantic and criminal - ensue.

Ishqiya isn't a traditional Bollywood movie; there are no song-and-dance numbers and it clocks in at a neat two hours. What really intrigued me about it was the fact that the plot and characters - especially Krishna - make sense, which makes them universal. With a bit of tweaking, these characters could be playing out this same plot in Australia or Scotland or wherever. If they do an American remake, by-the-by, my fantasy cast would include Sam Rockwell, Jeff Bridges and Toni Collette (yes, I know she's Australian, but she does a flawless American accent, so shush.)

The casting of this version is note-perfect. I wasn't sure about Vidya Balan at first, simply because she looks South Indian to me, but she has a steeliness about her that fits Krishna exactly. I do not believe there is another major actress working in Hindi films today who could have played broken-hearted, sly, smart Krishna as well as Vidya did - maybe Rani Mukherjee, but steely resolve has never been her forte, and I can't really see her playing as unglamorous a character as this, oil in her hair and all. And, wow, Arshad Warsi. To watch him in any of the dime-a-dozen comedies he does, you'd never think the man could act, but I'm very pleased to be proven wrong. In lesser hands, Babban would just be the lecherous comic relief character; Arshad Warsi gave him depth and enough warmth that Babban is as strong a character as his uncle Khalujaan, which brings us nicely to Naseeruddin Shah.

When writing about great actors, I am reminded of something Laurence Olivier once wrote about Anthony Hopkins auditioning for the role of Edmund* in King Lear - that he walked away with the part as neatly as a cat would with a piece of fish. We're so used to expecting that calibre of acting from Naseeruddin that even though he embodies henna-ed Khalujaan perfectly - a career criminal who once had aspirations towards the arts and falls in love with Krishna because of her music first - it simply doesn't have the same wow factor as the other two central performances. "It's Naseeruddin Shah! Of course he's good, what else would you expect? The man was the best thing about Krrish, for crying out loud."

Being set in the Hindi belt, the language they use in this movie is a bit different from what I'm used to, and weirdly, the movie wasn't subtitled, so a few of the lines went right over my head. What exactly is a "sulphate?" (And if you tell me, well, metals react with sulphuric acid to produce metallic sulphates, I will hit you. somehow.) But to be honest, it's refreshing to watch a Hindi film that for once, is not set in Bombay or the UK or Canada or Australia or the USA. If someone's only experience of India was through mainstream Hindi films, I very much doubt he or she would even suspect that rural India - apart from maybe Punjab - exists! It does, and in the boondocks of UP (where this film is set) and Bihar, kidnappings are rampant, guns are everywhere and life is desperate for the have-nots.

By Hindi film standards, Ishqiya is quite racy, because whoa, Arshad Warsi and Vidya Balan have chemistry. On the flipside, it is well-acted; the writing by Vishal Bharadwaj, Abhishek Chaubey and Sabrina Dhawan is sharp - plus there's a Chekov's gun!; and the direction by Abhishek Chaubey is quite good, and I don't mean, "for his first film," I mean good. So. When can we look forward to Ishqiya 2?

*It may have been Edgar, I'm not sure. 

It's like you hit me with lightning

Awesomely, Ellie Goulding made Auntie Beeb's Sound of 2010 list! Have a listen:

Like all the boys before, like all the boys, boys, boys

You left a blood stain on the floor
You set your sights on him
You left a hand print on the door
Like all the boys before, like all the boys before

This is our luck, baby, running out
Her clothes were never off
We still have our lives to run about
To steal the map, steal the map, to get us back on track
I've seen you in a fight you lost, I've seen you in a fight

We're under the sheets and you're killing me
In our house made of paper, your words all over me
We're under the sheets and you're killing me

(Like all the boys before, like all the boys, boys, boys)

In here the world won't bring us down
Our plan is golden
Out there a lonely girl could drown
In here we're frozen

Where did the people go?
My hands are empty
You're not the answer I should know
Like all the boys before, like all the boys before
(whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa)

We're under the sheets and you're killing me
In our house made of paper, your words all over me
We're under the sheets and you're killing me

We're in a mess babe, we're in a mess babe
Your more is less babe (oh, oh)

We're under the sheets and you're killing me
In our house made of paper, your words all over me
We're under the sheets and you're killing me

(I've seen you in a fight you lost
Like all the boys before, like all the boys before)

We're under the sheets and you're killing me
In our house made of paper, your words all over me
We're under the sheets and you're killing me

Killing me, killing me, killing me

"I'm on TV! I can do what I want!"

Because Leverage is awesome and y'all should be watching it -

"On what planet do you spend most of your time?"

Following on from this post -



Marry me, Barney Frank.

For a Brit's take on how Universal Healthcare is supposedly The Return Of The Nazis, go here.

What is it about bad boys?

"The crazy matricidal homicidal serial killer who eats brains is not hot. The evil serial killer is, I repeat, not hot. (pause) Except for the part where he totally is. (sigh)"

Blair Forever(ish)

"Watch out, Gordon Brown!"

Dean said, Sam said

Why are more people not watching this show?

It's like a buffet... but with people!

"Y'know, I just realized that..."

Now Playing: Ratt – Round and Round

So there I was, minding my own business, when Rishi takes it upon himself to tag me. First the guy told me who died in OotP, then this? This means war, man. *shakes fist*

But then I thought, “If I had to learn stuff in 2006, why should my blog readers get off scott-free?” Thus, without further ado, 2006 in Epiphanies, Realizations and Lessons Learnt:

1. Having all four wisdom teeth removed really isn’t that big of a deal - Seriously. You know how people are all, “OMG, the agony!!! It was horrible!!! THE PAIN!!!” and then you get all freaked out, and you almost decide not to have the surgery done, but then it’s too late to cancel? It didn’t help that a passing acquaintance (really, I’d just met her) felt the need to share the story of her friend who went into hospital to have her cancer of the mouth operated on, but who died of a hospital-acquired infection. Also not helpful was the knowledge that some people are actually non-receptive to pain medications such as percocet. So the night before the operation, there I was, tossing and turning, imagining myself dying of a horrible infection (damn you, pseudomonas!) without the least painkiller-induced respite. Imagine, therefore, my surprise, when the whole thing went off well, and I hardly even needed any pain meds, just a few days spent recuperating at home with an icepack to the face.

2. I may not be a dog person, but I absolutely cannot stand to watch movies where bad things happen to them. It’s pathetic, really – I cried everytime I watched the trailer for Lassie! The movie itself would probably have me bawling in the aisles, sobbing about that poor dog.

3. There are some people with whom it is useless to argue. While I’d like to be able to take the easy route and say that most of these people are conservative / right-wing ideologues (Varsha Bhosle, Bill O’Reilly, Christie Blatchford), the truth is liberal / left-wing ideologues can be just as overzealous and screechy and blind to the possibility that there can be truth beyond their narrow ken.

4. I LOVE the angst. All my favourite TV shows serve it up in dollops. Grey’s Anatomy? Angsty. Supernatural? Hot AND Angsty. Battlestar Galactica? Subsists on Angst and Octagons. Veronica Mars? Noir with angst. Doctor Who? Long-running angst. My favourite movie of the year, The Prestige? Existentially angsty. Angst – the flavour of the future.

5. Doctor Who is the show that never ends. It only just struck me this year, and frankly, it’s rather off-putting. Who wants to watch a character who can just keep going and going and going (for atleast 3 more actors?) I mean, I know it’s a long-running show and a hugely successful formula, but don’t people want closure on the character?

6. I’m a Christmas Carol purist. I grew up listening to Jim Reeves & Andy Williams at Christmastime, and anyone else just sounds like an interloper to me. One notable exception is Josh Groban, whose rendition of O Holy Night is just melt-inducing. Here, have a listen.



And now I tag Hemlyn, Stephen, Beth and Maja for a bout of reminiscence. Enjoy!

Merry Christmas!

and because I am on such a Supernatural kick right now -

Stopgap Measure

I'm caught in the throes of blogger ennui.

Oh, woe.

On the positive side, I have found something that'll help you bide the time till a more substantive post arrives. Ladies and Gents - 'Kya Surat Hai' by the Bombay Vikings, a song that I found irresistibly funny when it first came out in 1999 or thereabouts.

Not Getting Sexyback

The first time I heard this track, I had no clue who was singing. There’s something familiar, I thought, but damned if I know what that is. Halfway through the second time I heard it, something clicked. That… that’s not Justin Timberlake, is it? Since when has he sounded like a girl?

I like the song. It gets under your skin, drags you out of your chair and has you shimmying and dancing on the spot. Here’s the question, though: why is it that Paris Hilton’s first album is universally condemned as being over-produced, when her braying gets modulated down to singing – while here, Timberlake’s admittedly higher register gets bumped into a whole different sex, and no one says anything?

Ben Rayner on Paris Hilton in the Toronto Star, Aug 27th 2006: "Of course Paris sounds decent. The girl has more money than all of our gods combined and about equal "pull," at least in those rarefied celebrity circles where "pull" is considered next to godliness.

If the first 15 runs at the thing had turned out something that gave listeners brain aneurysms and wiped out migratory bird flocks, the cash would have kept flowing until the evil was sufficiently contained for mass distribution at Wal-Mart. The music industry needs customers; it's not gonna kill them outright."

Timberlake, on the other hand, made the cover of Rolling Stone in September.

Huh? I'm so confused.

PS - The fact that I’m - in a sense - defending Paris Hilton actually makes me dislike the song more than I would've under normal circumstances.

Insane, y'know, in that camera-friendly way

I don't know what this means, or even if it's meant to mean anything, but damn if it didn't crack me up -

Do you know a bot?

Now Playing: Basshunter - Boten Anna

Now you too can share in the trippiness that is Boten Anna. Props to Jools for telling me about this song.

In other news, close-up photography bugs the crap out of me.