The Ghibli Theater Watch: Porco Rosso

January 26, 2012
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A Pig's gotta fly.

Today was the first day of the 2-week Ghibli retrospective that’s begun at the Egyptian and Aero theaters. Porco Rosso was the first film being screened. Fresh transfer, and this is the twentieth anniversary of its release. I am happy to say that it blew my mind just as thoroughly as it did the first time I saw it, many years ago. Some things are timeless indeed.

Is Porco Rosso the most adult-oriented of the Ghibli movies? Not just adult in the sense that the primary characters are middle-aged, but also because the protagonists Marco and Gina are obviously world-wary, both a little jaded, with a trace of wistfulness in their demeanor. Fio, the young aircraft designer who accompanies Marco in the second half of the film is the obvious Miyazaki teenage heroine, the archetype that features in all his films. But the story is about Marco and Gina and their past and all the stories that they carry. And for once, we do not see Miyazaki’s world filtered through adolescent eyes. There is a clear political tone to the film too, with Miyazaki’s distaste for fascism coming through loud and clear. And then there is death and the hint of the afterlife for people of the  sky, beautifully portrayed in a sequence inspired by a Roald Dahl short story.

Call me crazy, but I think it would be an interesting experience to watch the film in Italian. The only dubbed anime I have watched and enjoyed so far is the TV series Hellsing. It is set in England, and it only seemed right to watch English characters speak in their language. Newspapers, fliers and movie posters in the world of Porco Rosso are in Italian, as is the song Gina sings in the hotel. I remember reading somewhere that Miyazaki apparently liked the French version better than the Japanese. But then, the former had Jean Reno voicing Porco – you cannot get better voice-acting than that.

What got me this time around was how expertly – and effortlessly – this film takes you through a range of emotions, from the opening hilarity of the Mamma Auito pirates kidnapping all the school children and the chase sequence that follows, to the sobering nature of Marco and Gina’s unspoken relationship. From the heady aerial battles to the quiet scenes involving sky, water, sand and clouds. and the most bravura segue of them all – the way the cartoonish showdown between Curtiss and Marco ends the main storyline, only to dissolve into Fio’s voice-over gently nudging the curtain down. Leaving behind bittersweet emptiness, with just an edge of … I dunno, hope? Promises? The idea that the real world does not really have an ending?

Yes, this is the Ghibli film with the most perfect closing sequence. I am willing to defend this opinion to the death.

Saturday has My Neighbor Totoro and Whisper of the Heart playing back to back at the Aero, in Santa Monica. There’s Spirited Away tomorrow too, but I will catch the re-screening next week instead. Original Japanese with subtitles wins over an English dub.

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Categories Movies

Nostalgia: The first Nihilanth

January 25, 2012
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For those who came in late, Nihilanth is an inter-IIT-IIM quiz festival that is held every once in a while. It’s technically supposed to be organized on an annual basis, but that does not happen. It is held at a random IIT or an IIM, the choice of institute being decided by the sudden death of two randomly selected quizzers from every institute on a deserted island, or so I hear.

My association with this festival goes back to the very first time it was organized – brace yourselves, young ‘uns, it was way back in 2003. NINE YEARS, holy moley! I was 23, about to turn 24, and the only quizzes I had conducted so far were in my own college, and in a local Warangal school, where the kids really enjoyed the impromptu Harry Potter round. Except the ones that had not read Harry Potter by then, the little losers. Well anyway, what happened was that we had organized a quiz festival (called Trivium) in our college a few years ago, and I did the music and movie quiz. A bunch of students from REC Surathkal were in attendance, and proceeded to make a killing at the events. They won nearly every quiz, and were kind enough to take us quiz-masters out for dinner as well with their hard-earned prize money. One of them happened to go to IIM Indore a few years later, and it was him – Suryakrishna Tamada Tatineni, ‘Suki’ for short, who had the bright idea of organizing an inter-IIT-IIM event. And the brighter idea of inviting me to conduct the Entertainment quiz.

Somewhere down the line, people seem to have come to the conclusion that I was responsible for naming the aforementioned quiz the ‘MELA’, short for Music(or Movies) Entertainment Literature and Arts, thereby starting the tradition of referring to every entertainment quiz by that name. People are wrong. Personally I thought the name is a ghastly one and I have no idea who coined it. But for better or worse, it has stuck, and I suppose it does not really sound that bad now.

I wasn’t paid much for my services. But that did not matter, I was over the moon at being invited. Why? Because the General quiz was being conducted by a certain Siddharth Basu. I was going to conduct a quiz with – okay, technically just at the same venue, but still – the guy who got a majority of college students in India addicted to quizzing. Yes, this was a Fucking Big Deal indeed. I found out later that the man was paid a 100 times my fee. Heh, now that was a Big Deal.

But screw that. A lot of things came about thanks to that quiz. It jump-started my alternative career as Quizmaster for college festivals around India – which in turn nourished finances for my fledgling comic art collection. The spurt in invites happened primarily because the people who attended the MELA liked it a lot, and when they needed a quiz-master for their college fests, they gave me a chance. Gaurav Sabnis was there. I remember his college contingent being a little late to my quiz, because of which I had go through my prelims again. He had very kind things to say about it – little wonder then that the second quiz I conducted was in IIM Lucknow the next year. Arnav Sinha was in IIT Delhi, and was one of the reasons I was the first QM they locked on when Nihilanth happened there the second time, a few years later. This was also the first time I met Shamanth and Siddharth (who, as I realized recently, keeps popping into the blog every now and then – hi again, Bofi!) They did not make it to the finals of my quiz, but kicked ass in all the others. Fellow Hyderabad-quizzers Dhaaji and Anil were in attendance too – Anil could not participate that year, but Dhaaji did, as a solo IIM Bangalore representative if I remember correctly. I believe I lost all chances of doing a quiz at IIM Bangalore because one of my questions involved identifying the Beatles, from a demo of  ’Strawberry Fields’, and that pissed him off beyond belief. Sheesh. I wish I have an excuse, but I don’t. What the hell was I thinking?

It was not entirely by coincidence that I ended up in the same taxi as my fellow-Quizmaster doing the Science and Sports quizzes at the event. We were housed in adjacent rooms at the Hotel Sayaji Grande after all, and over genial breakfast conversation on Saturday, we learnt of common interests. Phone numbers, as well as trivia about Richmal Crompton and Tintin comics were exchanged. We promised to stay in touch, more so because he tantalized me with news about how a friend from the USA had gotten him six CDs full of digital comics. I had heard of Arul Mani before, but that was the first time I met the Good Doctor. Neither his magnificent whiskers nor his patented Thigh Grab were on display that day, but it was an auspicious start to a long and lesbian-vampire-enriched relationship. Meeting Arul was also how I found myself in Daly Memorial Hall one fine Sunday that year, asking questions about Malini Iyer, HP Lovecraft and Artemis Fowl to a mostly-befuddled audience of Karnataka Quiz Association members.

So why am I talking about this today? Because of my books, surprisingly. You see, all my books just arrived yesterday from India, and are currently taking up a bulk of my apartment-space. I have been halfheartedly opening up some of them this evening, trying not to hyperventilate in the process. And I came across a bunch of pictures. Most of them were taken by a helpful student on my camera (trivia: the camera was part of my winnings at the Saarang 2001 Main Quiz at IIT Madras). Yes, it was a film camera, and yes, the photographs are mostly crap. But still, a hearty steaming slice of nostalgia.

This year’s Nihilanth was held at IIM Lucknow a few days ago, and it was the first in which I did not conduct a single quiz. On the plus side, I go to watch Porco Rosso in the Egyptian theater tomorrow.

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Categories Myself, Quizzing

Reverse piracy – an example

January 24, 2012
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A few years ago, a film-maker called Jaideep Varma began working on a documentary. The subject of his film was a Delhi-based band called Indian Ocean.Until then, Varma’s filmography featured a low-budget film called Hulla that came and went without much fuss. I have no idea if it is any good.

Leaving Home, as the documentary came to be called (it’s named after one of the band’s early songs), is perhaps the first of its kind in India – an up-close-and-personal look at a band that has managed to exist through more than two decades, defying every naysayer concerned about the state of independent music in India. Jamming their way to glory since the eighties, Indian Ocean has survived musical trends, record label shennanigans, and recently, personal tragedy, to become one of the most distinctive musical acts in the country. Their songs range from fiery political poetry set to music to long, meandering instrumentals that soothe and excite at the same time; they combine rustic melodies of the hills with virtuoso chord progressions and bass licks. One of their most well-known songs is a centuries-old Aramaic prayer arranged in their own unique style. The only common element to their music is a rawness, an Indian-ness that is hard to talk about but simple to understand once you listen to them.

The making of the documentary was, as far as I know, a troubled, rough affair for Mr. Varma. I know he put a lot of his savings into it, and that of his friends. His troubles were further exacerbated when no distributor would pick up the film just because there was no precedent for something like it. In his own words:

Making the film, however, was the easy part. The real struggle began then as there was ostensibly no outlet to release the film. At least that’s what the powers-that-are in the industry said repeatedly. “There is just no place to show this.” 150 channels on television but not sure where this fits in. Scores of multiplex screens all around India but not sure if even one can be spared to accommodate this. That’s what the recurrent theme was when the rounds of producers’/ distributors’ offices began. We were laughed out of the room most times…once or twice, quite literally.

The film was completed in 2008. Asheem Chakraborty, the lead singer of Indian Ocean passed away in 2009. The band carried on with its musical journey regardless, with a temporary lead singer and tabla player. Jaideep managed to get a half-hearted theatrical release for his film in 2010, in selected multiplexes in some major cities. It went on to release on Direct-To-Home cable, and then got a DVD release. Word of mouth helped, as did the publicity on Facebook. It won a National Award for Best Arts and Culture film – even there, the producers’ credit was mangled during the awards ceremony.

Despite being an Indian Ocean fan, I never managed to catch the theatrical release of the film. I wanted to buy the DVD, but there were too many life-changed going on at that time and I was not buying anything at all. Finally, when they announced the non-availability of the DVD on the Facebook page, I figured I had no alternative but to torrent it. There was just one source, with one seed and 71 people downloading. Never a good sign. But I kept the torrent on, and a few weeks later, it was done.

When I got around to watching it, I found that the video began with a plug for a 286-minute extended edition of the documentary. Which sounded great, but where on earth was it available? Did it release at all? A few hasty Google searches revealed that yes, the longer version had released, and was out of print as well. I went and checked the Facebook page again. They railed against the disinterested producers who were not interested in bringing out more copies of the DVD even though there was a clear demand. But wait, it also mentioned that copies were available on Flipkart for a limited time. I went over and checked the site even though I was fairly sure it would not be there.

But it was! Leaving Home: The Longer Trip, and was being offered at a discount as well. Ordered immediately, and a friend who was in India at that time kindly agreed to accept the shipment on my behalf, and got it over. I got it this weekend. Haven’t played it yet, but it’s funny how I ended up buying something that I had downloaded just a month ago.

And that, my friends, is how reverse piracy works.

Previous posts on Indian Ocean here and here.

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Categories Movies, Music

Over and over

January 23, 2012
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Christmas Eve last year promised to be a sedate affair. I was recuperating from my (nearly) month-long trip, and all I had on my mind was an evening of peace and quiet, alone with three cats in the house. But Bryan Lee O’Malley, he of Scott Pilgrim fame, tweeted about the movie Battle Royale being screened at the Silent Movie theater. That’s a quaint-looking location on Fairfax I remembered passing by and wondering about quite a few times on the way to Hollywood. Battle Royale being one of the few movies that fall in the viewed-5-times-and-above category for me, I was tempted. Despite having owned and seen multiple DVD versions – The Regular version, the Extended Director’s Cut and the Uncut Edition had all appeared in National Market, I had never seen it in a theater. Further investigation revealed that the film had never seen a theatrical release in the US, thanks to the Columbine incident occurring the  same year it released in Japan. So this screening would be the first official screening, based on a high definition conversion of the upcoming Blu-ray release by Anchor Bay. All of the above reasons were enough for me to drop my plans of lying back on my couch with a purring cat on my belly and sipping on metaphorical pennyroyal tea. Off I went.

Needless to say, I had an amazing time, and even met O’Malley at the popcorn stand.

Cheesy and show-off-y picture proof

The last time I saw Battle Royale was in 2007. None of my love for the movie had waned in five years, but there was a strange outsider-level objectivity that crept in this time. I never realized, for example, how annoyingly earnest the two lead characters were. Both Shuya and Noriko were too sugary, too good to be true. Maybe it was the Hunger Games experience from a few weeks ago that had supplanted my blind devotion to this movie. Or maybe it was the manga I read a few years ago, which made the characters of Mitsuko and Kiriyama so much more engaging than the one-note killing machines they turn out in the movie. I also found myself chuckling along at some of the over-the-top acting – Nobu’s death, the dramatic gestures some of the students make when they exit the classroom at the beginning, Kitano’s star-tinted turn.

I like re-watching movies with different people. Primarily because of the fresh perspective such a viewing brings. The odd little reactions you happen to notice in others at scenes that you reacted to differently. Or because you are focusing on a something other than the primary plot and pay more attention to the details that passed you by the first time. Maybe a snatch of a soundtrack, an in-joke that you did not get the first time. Something that resonates from an article you read about the movie, maybe.

But real life has been catching up. I did not watch too many films the past couple of months, barring the occasional Laemmle marathon and the quickies at the Rave theaters next door to my office. I cannot seem to sit down before the laptop/TV and watch anything at a stretch. Terabytes of old movie dumps have been “liberated” on random whims, because I know I will never get around to watching them.

Yesterday, I went and watched Lagaan – this time with a group of people of which I knew only one. We made a proper movie evening out of it, with bhelpuri, samosas and popcorn aplenty and a generous smattering of enthusiasm in the audience, most of whom had seen it already. It was my 20th viewing of Lagaan, my obsession with that movie having lasted through multiple cities, different levels of Aamir-Khan-reaction and Rahman-adulation, and a constant loathing of cricket. (And yes, I started keeping count after the 8th viewing) I enjoyed it thoroughly. It still makes me laugh at the right story and character moments. Paul Blackthorne as Captain Russell and Chris England as Yardley fill me with fanboy glee, and I am tempted to reread England’s book as soon as I can (it’s called From Balham to Bollywood, and it was a great read the first time).

There is a peculiar happiness also to noticing the same somewhat-bloopers – like Bhuvan saying Radha’s husband is Anay, instead of the correct Ayan, or the presence of two cricketers named Smith and Wesson in the English XI, especially the fact that Elizabeth dances with just the two of them at the ball.  Thanks to the DVD being an American release, the scenes with the British characters alone had English dialogues, instead of Amitabh Bachchan’s baritone explaining the proceedings. We did skip over the ‘O Paalanhare’ song, which to me is the nadir of the movie, an unnecessary face-palm of a sequence rendered even more painful by Lata Mangeshkar’s voice.  1

I spent a total of 4 hours on the bus, both ways. But totally worth it.

A two-week-long retrospective of Studio Ghibli films begins this Thursday. They include fifteen classic Miyazaki and Takahata films being screened at the Egyptian theater in Hollywood and the Aero theater in Santa Monica. I have made up my mind to attend every one of them. Sure, I own all the DVDs, and have seen the films multiple times, but the joy of the rewatch compells me. Besides, I’ve heard enough shit from pal Jussi about how he saw them screened in theaters in Helsinki and it’s high time I get back at him.

The only ones not being screened are EarthSea, Ponyo, Arrietty and Grave of the Fireflies. I can understand the absence of the fourth film, but not the first three. Oh well.

Notes:

  1. Earlier musings on Lagaan here and here. ↩
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Categories Movies, Myself

Great Teacher Onizuka: A Review

January 22, 2012
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This was originally published in Rolling Stone India, November 2009. Dusted and put up here because I plan to do a mega-reread of the series in the next few days.

Writer/Artist: Tohru Fujisawa
Publisher: Tokyopop
Rating: Four and a half stars

Meet Eikichi Onizuka, a bottom-rung university graduate (barely), whose primary interests are peering up girls’ skirts at local malls and getting into trouble – not mutually exclusive activities, those two. But fate has different plans in store for virginity-challenged young Eikichi – circumstance makes him leave his delinquence behind him and opt for a new career, that of an educator. Eikichi Onizuka, 22 years old, sets out to become Great Teacher Onizuka, the greatest sensei in Japan. His mission: to make school fun again. His secondary mission – getting to fourth base with someone. Anyone.

That is the premise behind this beloved shonen manga series, that traces Onizuka’s explosive – and often ludicrous – adventures in teaching. At first glance, it seems humanly impossible for a man of his calibre to really do much with his career choice. He cheated his way through his own academic career, seemingly has an IQ of 50, and the only legitimate qualification on his misspelled resume is that he has secured a second dan black belt in karate. He is perverted, being more than a little obsessed with young girls and their underwear. And he lets his fists do the talking most of the time. The first arc of the series establishes how Onizuka, beating all these odds, manages to get through a teacher training course at a public school and becomes a temporary teacher in the Holy Forest Academy, a prestigious private institute. He is put in charge of Class 3-4, whose students have terrorized the previous three home-room teachers into ending their careers – one committed suicide, another developed an eating disorder. It would take a very foolhardy, or a very determined educator to take up the responsibility of cleaning the school’s Augean stables.

But determination is what Onizuka has in spades. “You are a cockroach”, one of his students shrieks at him with disgust, right after the would-be teacher pops up where he wasn’t really supposed to. This analogy echoes throughout the series. Like a cockroach, Onizuka wiggles himself into his students’ lives even as they hurl expletives at him and threaten (and often perpetrate) violence against his self. Just as a cockroach skitters away from all attempts to stomp it out, our hero manages to best all the traps his devilish students cook up – from publishing morphed porno pictures of Onizuka to having him framed for embezzling money from student funds. And slowly, one by one, our hero wins them over using a combination of his perversely inappropriate world-view and his incredible physical prowess.

All long-running series by single creators run into similar teething issues – an initial rush of heady ideas that slowly slides into a predictable graph of highs and lows, where the creator struggles not only to find the voice, but to etch out a character’s life-story in a way that builds on its premise, instead of stagnating into repetitive cliche. Maintaining the momentum of a series, without over-stretching a story-line is a tough call. It would have been very easy for writer/artist Tohru Fujisawa to stumble. The second arc, that of the students being set straight by the teacher, resolutely avoids falling into the trap. Sure, it is long, but there are two aspects in which Fujisawa scores top of the manga-ka class (if you will pardon the school-based metaphor) – the delineation of the individual characters that make up the Onizukaverse. Every student in the class has a unique personality, a standalone voice which makes the reader identify with them. Partly because they are there in every classroom in any school in the world – the quiet, shy video-game-playing geek who is bullied at every turn; the computer whiz who knows more than he lets on; the headstrong yet confused loud-mouth who takes offence at minor quips; a girl whose parents are influential bureaucrats, a fact that she uses to her advantage; another with a dark secret involving a previous teacher. Sure, they are all genre archetypes, but it is Fujisawa’s genius that breathes new, fresh life into them.

The second thing that elevates the series to greatness is the sheer unpredictability of the central character. Eikichi Onizuka is a man of hidden surprises, whose heart of gold is matched only by his complete irreverence and lack of respect for authority. Early on in his career, Onizuka figures out that he really loves teaching, and he takes it on himself to be the kind of teacher that his generation did not have. At the crux of every decision Onizuka makes, however frivolous and played-for-laughs it seems to be, there is an important life-lesson that he imparts to his students. But Onizuka being the way he is, any attempt to take him seriously usually backfires, with hilarious results.

In addition to changing the way his students feel towards school, Onizuka also takes on the strict authoritarians that make up the faculty of Holy Forest Academy. His primary whipping-dog being the perennially grumpy Vice-Principal Uchiyamada – a running gag involves the Vice-Principal’s Toyota Cresta. The third arc of the series, in particular, involves a final stand against a new Principal who ousts the support of Chairman Sakurai, whose tacit approval had made a large part of Onizuka’s brushes with authority seem minor in the past.

Great Teacher Onizuka made me laugh, it had me gasping with incredulity, it made me come up with excuses to avoid work just so I could tear through the twenty-five volumes as soon as I could. It is not without its faults – a great deal of fan-service persists throughout the story, and let’s face it – if you have seen To Sir With Love and Munnabhai MBBS, you realize that the premise of GTO is hardly original. But even with all its over-the-top antics, it’s not just a fine comedy series, but also a drama that’s an indictment of the pettiness that afflicts today’s education system. It’s a scathing denouncement of self-serving, vainglorious modern-day teachers for whom teaching is nothing more than a way to make money, rather than the life-altering position it is meant to be. Hey, it made me want to go back to school, and that’s quite something!

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Categories Comics, Manga, Reviews
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