We are all familiar with the "new age" comics seen on 24 hour cartoon channels which have realistic images and lots of violence and are usually quite horrible (unlike the loveable Tom and Jerry stips of yore.) Frank Miller is the author of several graphic novels titled Sin City - a city where, as the name suggests, life is stripped of all decency and reduced to sleaze and violence and the pursuit of your base instincts. Robert Rodriguez (along with Frank Miller and Quentin Tarantino) brought together a galaxy of A-list actors (Bruce Willis, Benicio Del Toro, Elijah Wood, Brittany Murphy, Mickey Rourke, Josh Hartnett etc.) and brought these garish cartoons to life in a movie by the same name. This movie is essentially a set of 3 'shorts' adapted into a 2 hour narrative.
So, if I find new age cartoons grotesque why am I reviewing this film? My answer is for the sheer vividness of the images. One often sees movies where cartoons have been brought to life. But this is a movie where real people go through the motions of fighting, shooting, killing, knifing, eating other people (yes you got that right - cannibalism is one of the subplots) but the whole effect is of watching a cartoon strip slowly unfold before your eyes. This movie is entirely shot in black and white with a judicious dash of colour... (I have included a shot from the movie as an attachment to give you a general idea). The effect is very stylish and a visual delight.
To get back to mundane aspect of the movie - a story.... there really isn't much of a story... a cop (Bruce Willis) fighting a paedophile (Nick Stahl who is also the hideous "Yellow Bastard") and happens to be the all powerful Senator Rourke's son; a do gooder (Clive Owen) fighting a no good cop (an inspired performance by Benicio Del Toro of "Traffic" fame) to maintain the balance of power between the city cops and the hookers; and a grieving lover (Mickey Rourke) avenging the death of his lover (Jaime King) at the hands of an unknown assasin.
So is this movie for the lily livered people? I think it is... as a thumb rule I would suggest that if you have been able to stomach (and enjoy) Pulp Fiction and the Kill Bill series, then this movie is certainly for you.
By,
Sachin Desai
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Sunday, April 09, 2006
Review of 'Crash'
'Crash' is about racism. It is set in big-bad LA, where the multitude of its characters seem to be relentlessly subjecting each other to racist behaviour. Racism is dangerous in that it is unpredictable, and veiled until it gets triggered resulting in hurtful behaviour. 'Crash' takes a look at it, but comes up short.
There are several problems with 'Crash'. First, there are way too many characters hammering home a variation of the same story, and all of them are spread too thin. We don't know what motivates them, or what their other concerns in life are.
Second, a lot of the characters are movie and tv stereotypes. So you have a bad cop/good cop combo. You have the black boss (actually two) who has put in years of hard work to get to where he is (presumably the white guys don't need to). The DA is white, and wants to appear squeaky clean. The locksmith is mexican, the Iranian is hot headed . We don't see the medical
insurance administrator woman, but she has a name (shanicwa or something) that
can't get any blacker. There is a rich black couple outinsulting each other by comparing each other's blackness. There are two black guys engaged in an analysis of why/whether they were discriminated against in a white diner, and how they should be the ones feeling scared in a white neighbourhood. and just when the irony gets you to sympathize with them, they pull a gun to carjack a lincoln navigator (There are two of those too). Later, the white woman victim of the jacking admits to feeling suspicious about the two would-be black thieves. So was she right, and should white people be afraid of black people or not? There is a old black mom who is on cocaine. Why did she have to be black? Why couldn't the DA's wife be on cocaine, she is neurotic and lonely to begin with.
And then (altho a couple of my friends thought that was the director/writer being blunt) the movie democratizes racism. Everybody is doing it to everyone else. The latina cop telling an asian woman driver how the latter would have been able to "blake" had she being looking over the wheel, imitating almost honestly how a lot of older asian women dlive their cars. Her black cop boyfriend couldn't care less about the difference in hispanic ethnicities, because he wonders aloud "why then do they all park their cars on the grass". The bad cop is eventually redeemed, maybe forgiven too. A hitchhiker discovers, to his discomfort, that the good cop isn't as race-blind as he is made out to be. So is it that everybody is flawed, and racism and prejudices are par for the course? and we can be bad at times but there is the good to offset it? The only characters that come out clean are the mexicans, both the locksmith and the DA's maid. Again stereotypes of migrant workers that never complain.
Coincidentally, I am reading Amartya Sen's new book, 'Identity and Violence, Illusion of Destiny'. Haven't finished reading it yet, but his thesis is that it is wrong to adopt or assign singular identities to people. i.e, wrong to label anybody on the basis of one major affiliation, black, white, rich, poor, muslim, catholic, western,eastern etc. He says we are a mix of several attributes, making this reductionist approach fundamentally wrong. What makes it worse is that once we accept this classification, we tend to propose solutions on the basis of the super sets, each by definition incompatible with the other. 'Crash' i thought is guilty of this approach. It compartmentalizes its characters. And the characters also see themselves as belonging to these compartments. And having done that, they behave in the way those compartments are expected to behave.
Not unmissable. And don cheadle was way better than matt dillon.
By,
Nikhil Pednekar
There are several problems with 'Crash'. First, there are way too many characters hammering home a variation of the same story, and all of them are spread too thin. We don't know what motivates them, or what their other concerns in life are.
Second, a lot of the characters are movie and tv stereotypes. So you have a bad cop/good cop combo. You have the black boss (actually two) who has put in years of hard work to get to where he is (presumably the white guys don't need to). The DA is white, and wants to appear squeaky clean. The locksmith is mexican, the Iranian is hot headed . We don't see the medical
insurance administrator woman, but she has a name (shanicwa or something) that
can't get any blacker. There is a rich black couple outinsulting each other by comparing each other's blackness. There are two black guys engaged in an analysis of why/whether they were discriminated against in a white diner, and how they should be the ones feeling scared in a white neighbourhood. and just when the irony gets you to sympathize with them, they pull a gun to carjack a lincoln navigator (There are two of those too). Later, the white woman victim of the jacking admits to feeling suspicious about the two would-be black thieves. So was she right, and should white people be afraid of black people or not? There is a old black mom who is on cocaine. Why did she have to be black? Why couldn't the DA's wife be on cocaine, she is neurotic and lonely to begin with.
And then (altho a couple of my friends thought that was the director/writer being blunt) the movie democratizes racism. Everybody is doing it to everyone else. The latina cop telling an asian woman driver how the latter would have been able to "blake" had she being looking over the wheel, imitating almost honestly how a lot of older asian women dlive their cars. Her black cop boyfriend couldn't care less about the difference in hispanic ethnicities, because he wonders aloud "why then do they all park their cars on the grass". The bad cop is eventually redeemed, maybe forgiven too. A hitchhiker discovers, to his discomfort, that the good cop isn't as race-blind as he is made out to be. So is it that everybody is flawed, and racism and prejudices are par for the course? and we can be bad at times but there is the good to offset it? The only characters that come out clean are the mexicans, both the locksmith and the DA's maid. Again stereotypes of migrant workers that never complain.
Coincidentally, I am reading Amartya Sen's new book, 'Identity and Violence, Illusion of Destiny'. Haven't finished reading it yet, but his thesis is that it is wrong to adopt or assign singular identities to people. i.e, wrong to label anybody on the basis of one major affiliation, black, white, rich, poor, muslim, catholic, western,eastern etc. He says we are a mix of several attributes, making this reductionist approach fundamentally wrong. What makes it worse is that once we accept this classification, we tend to propose solutions on the basis of the super sets, each by definition incompatible with the other. 'Crash' i thought is guilty of this approach. It compartmentalizes its characters. And the characters also see themselves as belonging to these compartments. And having done that, they behave in the way those compartments are expected to behave.
Not unmissable. And don cheadle was way better than matt dillon.
By,
Nikhil Pednekar
Friday, April 07, 2006
An Admission
I wish I could write like Dorothy Parker,
Wendy Cope or Emily Dickinson;
Reality relieved by whoops of laughter -
Their barbs pointed and verse sharpened.
Wish I could describe like Bill Bryson,
My travels to lands far and near;
Love-story scented with cherry blossom,
‘The Lady and the Monk’ – Pico Iyer.
An Indian Enid Blyton would be nice too -
Magical folk on the faraway tree;
And mysteries solved by Chinky and Bablu,
Not scones, but samosas for tea.
Arun Shourie, once a mighty crusader,
Exposed scams and toppled governments,
I doubt I’d topple a glass of water,
Unless it shook from the force of derision.
Hemingway, Austen, Auden, Dostoevsky,
Let me not think of venturing there;
Even I must respect a boundary
Between wishful thinking and impudence bare.
I wish I could be Anita or Leo
With their ready verse and sparkling wit
Then we would be a triumphant trio.
(Your guess is right - Anita wrote this bit !)
But one cuts the coat to fit the cloth,
No point fretting over what I haven’t got;
To literature though I pledge my troth,
The literary muse – away he trots.
By,
Zenobia D. Driver
Wendy Cope or Emily Dickinson;
Reality relieved by whoops of laughter -
Their barbs pointed and verse sharpened.
Wish I could describe like Bill Bryson,
My travels to lands far and near;
Love-story scented with cherry blossom,
‘The Lady and the Monk’ – Pico Iyer.
An Indian Enid Blyton would be nice too -
Magical folk on the faraway tree;
And mysteries solved by Chinky and Bablu,
Not scones, but samosas for tea.
Arun Shourie, once a mighty crusader,
Exposed scams and toppled governments,
I doubt I’d topple a glass of water,
Unless it shook from the force of derision.
Hemingway, Austen, Auden, Dostoevsky,
Let me not think of venturing there;
Even I must respect a boundary
Between wishful thinking and impudence bare.
I wish I could be Anita or Leo
With their ready verse and sparkling wit
Then we would be a triumphant trio.
(Your guess is right - Anita wrote this bit !)
But one cuts the coat to fit the cloth,
No point fretting over what I haven’t got;
To literature though I pledge my troth,
The literary muse – away he trots.
By,
Zenobia D. Driver
Sunday, April 02, 2006
Review of "Pride and Prejudice'
I assume most people who watch this movie have previously either read the book or watched the BBC version or at least the horrible 'Bride and Prejudice'. (If you have not, you may not fully understand the movie. And this review.) I am sure there are other versions, perhaps in other languages (I know that a Hindi soap opera based on this story used to appear in DD many moons ago). So here we have one more movie based on the same book and when you step into the hall, you wonder what it has to offer ?
The one stark difference from the other versions I have seen is in the scenes. The picturisation is absolutely enchanting to say the least. The green English countryside, the constant downpours, the stone buildings, the noise and colour in the parties, the houses in which the girls live...the list can go on. Everything is vivid and alive. Unlike the BBC series (a very good one, I would like to add) where you somehow have the impression of watching the proceedings as a third party, the camera in this version makes you feel like you are actually over there watching the story unfold. Some of the characterizations are also good. Mr. Bennett in this movie is kinder and more in sync with the family than he was in the original book. Charlotte Lucas is perfect as an aging spinster; aware of the compromises she has to make. Miss Bingley in the few scenes she has comes across as she ought to – a clever, perhaps slightly cynical woman who is probably in love with Mr. Darcy, but wants him more for the advantages that come with such a marriage. The casting is also appropriate in most cases. Keira Knightley’s liveliness is just right for the role and the gaggle of sisters looks just the way you would have imagined them to be.
The challenge in taking a fairly complicated book like this and making it into a three-hour movie is in figuring out which scenes to leave out and which scenes to retain. Which characters are to be developed, and what side stories are to be forgotten. The central tale is that of Lizzie Bennet, the Gentleman’s daughter with no fortune and four sisters, falling in love with the rich and proud Mr. Darcy. Unfortunately the book has way too many characters that contribute to the tale of love between Lizzie and Darcy. Minor characters like Mr. and Mrs. Hurst are sacrificed. But the director still needs to retain Colonel Fitzwilliam and Anne De Bourgh. So at the end of the movie, the one overwhelming feeling you have is of having read a summary of the book. You can get what the movie is about, but you have not really had the time to cry and laugh with Lizzie. Lizzie and Darcy patching up makes you happy but does not make you wipe a tear, nod your head and say ‘these kids!’
There are some minor points to quibble on. Why does Mr. Bingley, instead of being a genial friend, come across as an ex-inmate of a mental asylum on rehabilitation in the countryside? He smiles like an imbecile every time he is on screen. Just when you are glad that he has stopped smiling, he opens his mouth and says some silly dialogues. Even his hair sticks out all over the place like he has had one too many electric shock treatments in the loony bin. Mr. Collins looks more sensible than he does. Also, did any woman say ‘Don’t judge me’ to her friends before Sex and the City? Why is Wickham barely there? And that’s not just because an eye-candy plays the role. As a fairly key character, the character should have been given at least as much importance as Mr. Collins.
On the whole, if you can, read the book. If you must watch this movie, reserve it for a rainy afternoon when the scenes in the movie matches the weather outside and you just may discover the spark of romance that makes the book one of the best romantic books ever written.
By,
Anita B.
The one stark difference from the other versions I have seen is in the scenes. The picturisation is absolutely enchanting to say the least. The green English countryside, the constant downpours, the stone buildings, the noise and colour in the parties, the houses in which the girls live...the list can go on. Everything is vivid and alive. Unlike the BBC series (a very good one, I would like to add) where you somehow have the impression of watching the proceedings as a third party, the camera in this version makes you feel like you are actually over there watching the story unfold. Some of the characterizations are also good. Mr. Bennett in this movie is kinder and more in sync with the family than he was in the original book. Charlotte Lucas is perfect as an aging spinster; aware of the compromises she has to make. Miss Bingley in the few scenes she has comes across as she ought to – a clever, perhaps slightly cynical woman who is probably in love with Mr. Darcy, but wants him more for the advantages that come with such a marriage. The casting is also appropriate in most cases. Keira Knightley’s liveliness is just right for the role and the gaggle of sisters looks just the way you would have imagined them to be.
The challenge in taking a fairly complicated book like this and making it into a three-hour movie is in figuring out which scenes to leave out and which scenes to retain. Which characters are to be developed, and what side stories are to be forgotten. The central tale is that of Lizzie Bennet, the Gentleman’s daughter with no fortune and four sisters, falling in love with the rich and proud Mr. Darcy. Unfortunately the book has way too many characters that contribute to the tale of love between Lizzie and Darcy. Minor characters like Mr. and Mrs. Hurst are sacrificed. But the director still needs to retain Colonel Fitzwilliam and Anne De Bourgh. So at the end of the movie, the one overwhelming feeling you have is of having read a summary of the book. You can get what the movie is about, but you have not really had the time to cry and laugh with Lizzie. Lizzie and Darcy patching up makes you happy but does not make you wipe a tear, nod your head and say ‘these kids!’
There are some minor points to quibble on. Why does Mr. Bingley, instead of being a genial friend, come across as an ex-inmate of a mental asylum on rehabilitation in the countryside? He smiles like an imbecile every time he is on screen. Just when you are glad that he has stopped smiling, he opens his mouth and says some silly dialogues. Even his hair sticks out all over the place like he has had one too many electric shock treatments in the loony bin. Mr. Collins looks more sensible than he does. Also, did any woman say ‘Don’t judge me’ to her friends before Sex and the City? Why is Wickham barely there? And that’s not just because an eye-candy plays the role. As a fairly key character, the character should have been given at least as much importance as Mr. Collins.
On the whole, if you can, read the book. If you must watch this movie, reserve it for a rainy afternoon when the scenes in the movie matches the weather outside and you just may discover the spark of romance that makes the book one of the best romantic books ever written.
By,
Anita B.
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