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Bile-bo Blabbings.

Damned Indian censors strike again. Cut the juiciest, squishiest scene out of Kill Bill Vol 2. And a long conversation between BB, Bill and Bea about goldfish and death – and the beginning of the part when BB wants to see Shogun Assassin was cut out, which I think the projectionist did, because the bugger probably had to get home early or something.

There was a heavy downpour today, upto about three in the afternoon, and there was no power for quite a long time. Brilliant. Mother Nature decides to show a little arm and leg on the day there is no office, and one of only two days I can curl up with a book on my beanbag and listen to Ennio Morricone. Just brilliant. It got so dark and gloomy, that I fell asleep at twelve, and woke up at about three thirty with the simultaneous sounds of my tummy growling and the cellphone ringing.

It seems an interview with AR Rahman was supposed to be on today on ND-TV,at 1930 hours. Somehow I was in the vicinity of a television at that time, and caught part of it. The program was called Walk the Talk ( whatever that means!), and well, the guy conducting the interview was one of those mindless twerps who can think of the words “Bombay”, “Roja”, “Sufi” and “Chhaiyya Chaiyya”, and thereby poses his questions revolving around these words, and these along. What an oaf! Buggers Rahman about puerile stuff like where he got the idea behind “Chhaiyya Chhaiyya” from ( which a cursory Google search would have revealed to him. ), and then starts asking things like “How do you compose music?”, and ‘Which is your favourite composition?” Hello? Here, a guy who listens to ARR can’t figure out which song is his favourite, and you expect the person who composed all those tunes painstakingly over the years to pick favourites. The interviewer was some reporter/editor from Indian Express – I never follow that newspaper anyways, and my opinion of the people they hire to conduct interviews has basically been flushed down the drain. Give me a Khalid Mohammed interview of ARR on Filmfare anyday.

Yesterday I found this anonymous comment on my post about Akira, ATC and co, which said “plz use lj-cut”. From what I gather, you, Mr Anonymous Chap is one of those who have listed me as a friend ( after all, if you came to my Livejournal and found it chockful of long posts, you would hardly bother whether they are lj-cut or not ) I was very rude with you, and I shall very rude to you or anyone else who asks me to “plz use lj-cut” the next time. Leave aside the business of this being my livejournal, and me doing what I want and all that individualistic crap, it’s just that none of what I post involves bandwidth-hogging pictures, or inane randomised quizzes which would violate the sanctity of your oh-so-compact Friends’-page. I presume right now you’re not interested in anything I have to say, and you want a free pass that says “here, I just saved you a couple of scroll-bar clicks” from me. Here’s some free advice instead – haul your lazy ass and click on the “manage friends” link, and kindly remove me from your list.  There, will save you a lot of free space on your friends’ page, and save me a lot of bad breath and ill-temper.

Humph. Livejournal “friends”, indeed!

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ATC, Akira – vol 1, and Medulla

Bamp babamp.

Bamp babamp bamp bamp bamp babamp.

Ab Tak Chhappan: The Soundtrack has crawled into my mind, and now refuses to check out.

“We wanted to capture the staccato mood of the film and in the process ended up using unconventional instruments like the sitar, to chill the audiences. The music overall is a blend of Atmospheric world music with psycho rhythms featuring the Armenian Duduk and Sarangi singing a duet together.” – the cd inlay cover says, and features a photograph of the composers, grinning away to glory.

If you look at it as a whole, ATC is highly skewed. The main theme, the short riff that I sung at the beginning, pops up throughout the soundtrack, and it is good enough to overwhelm the rest of the tracks. It serves as a very good reminder for the mood of the movie – crisp, brisk, with just the hint of on-the-edge feeling. But, ah – the combination of Niladri Kumar’s sitar, Naveen’s flute, Shekhar’s cello, and the composers ( I presume!) on the piano proves its finesse on the concluding track ( “Sadhu Agashe”), and track eleven – “Nirvana” comes a close second. “Run Sadhu Run” is the only track that comes close to chaotic orchestration, but I guess the situation it. One of the main personal gripes against the soundtrack when I heard it in the theater was that it was too in-your-face, and loud, but listening to the cd does not make it seem as cringeworthy as I thought it would get.

All in all, worth listening to, even if you insist on ignoring all the bits other than “bamp babump etc”, which plays at all keypoints, on different instruments, ranging from the lower keys of the piano to vibraphones, slap bass, and the cello.

* * *

I read the first volume of Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira today, the limited edition colour version that now costs a fortune ( 200$ for volume 3, last time I checked in Mile High Comics ) The book I read has “This is number 1247 of a limited edition of 2500 copies” inscribed on it, which is kind of awe-inspiring. Except of course, the copy I was reading was a digital version. Bless the guy who scanned in the 176 pages of his book.

Otomo-san, as I have repeatedly stated before, does not disappoint. The book is surprisingly unfaithful to the movie, which is rather unexpected ( he wrote the damn book! And he drew and directed the movie too), and also expected (after all, when does a movie stick to the book?) but what is strange is – the movie actually goes into more detail than the book, so far. The beginning of the book is somewhat abrupt, and the relationship between Tetsuo and Kaneda ( one looking upto the other, with a faint sense of resentment, and the other being an elder-brotherly figure), so nicely slotted in the first five minutes of the film, have yet to develop in the book.

The artwork is stunning, and the colour (by Steve Oliff) fits the dystopian look of Nu-Tokyo to the hilt. I am kind of worried, because someday I will be buying Akira, and I do not want to feel lost if I buy the Black and white versions. Otomo-san excels in scenes of mass-destruction – the level of detail has to be seen to be believed. Thank you, brainz, for getting me this ( and the Lone Wolf volume, and the Hellblazer series, and the Elektra collection, and ….wait, I need to catch my breath. )

Enough blabbering. I have a mild headache, which I am worried will mutate into something huge and of planet-shaking proportions if I loiter around the Internet too much.

But I (ahem!) forgot to say that Bjork’s latest album Medulla, which was released two days ago in the United States, and which has been residing in my hard disk for the past two weeks, is an experiment worthy of hosannas. The lady decided to have her album with voices alone, and no instruments. While some tracks ( Show me Forgiveness, Oll Virtan, Desired Constellation) are straight-out acapella songs, some (Pleasure is All Mine, Who Am I) are experimental, with voice-samples used as bass-tracks and layered to produce outrageous sounds; some (Oceania, Miðvikudags) are downright creepy!!! What am I saying? ALL of them are creepy – that’s why I listen to Bjork in the first place.

Note: I promise to buy this album as soon as I find it here. Feel rather guilty downloading it before it’s release date. I didn’t know it hadn’t been released yet, swear.

Sasi was a little depressed yesterday. So we went to Basheerbagh and he bought eleven DVDs. I bought four.

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Bangalore…and Some Excellent Soundtrack Albums

Because I had promised to be there, and because no unforeseen change in scheduling happened, I was in Bangalore for the weekend. ‘Twas Madhav’s quiz, folks, and it was superb. Too bad I didn’t couldn’t make it to the finals. Maybe I should have taken a peek at his laptop when I had the chance. But the Onam lunch made up for everything. *Inserted satisfied sigh here*

kvk, al_lude and Mitesh, otherwise known as the Metaquizziks, swept the finals ( with a point-lead twice of that the next team).

My self-control amazes me. I managed to come back from Bangalore without buying any books this time. Inspite of seeing the biographies of Orson Welles and Francis Ford Coppola and a neat-o Harlan Ellison short story collection at Blossom. (Which incidentally has shifted to a new, much spacier place on the same road) I bought a couple of cds, though. Passion: The Original Soundtrack to The Last Temptation of Christ – a pending wishlist item, Mike Oldfield’s The Killing Fields: Soundtrack, and Salim Sulaiman’s Ab Tak Chhappan.

Note: I am not losing my touch. I would have definitely bought those books from Blossom if I had cash with me. Alas, I didn’t.

Other soundtrack updates:

Inspite of buying Kyon! Ho Gaya Na two weeks ago, I listened to it properly just a couple of days ago, and wow, regardless of what the movie is or pretends to be, the music is fantastic! Shankar, Ehsaan and Loy stick to their formula of generating catchy songs with dollops of techno and an advertising hangover, what impresses me most is the way they stay away from getting caught in a groove, melodic or otherwise. These guys hit the bulls-eye with the selection of voices for each of their songs, the brilliant use of instruments, just the right mix that distinguishes a cacophonic hack-job from something that genuinely brings a spring in the step when you listen to it.

My current favourite happens to be “No No”, the second song. The credits say it’s sung by Shankar Mahadevan himself, Kunal Ganjawala, Chetan Shashital ( who’s the official voice for Amitabh Bachhan on the album), and oddly enough, Loy Mendonsa himself ( spelt wrongly as “Mendonca” on the album cover) The highpoint of the song however is the female voice, Dominique Cerejo.

slight digression: Dominique has this ethereal church-choiry voice, much like Anupama, she of Koncham Nilavu fame, very good for background tracks, and ARR used her to sing in the background tracks of both Fire and Iruvar, and also Kaadhal Desam ( from what I remember right now!) I did not know her surname was Cerejo, which means she is related to Clinton Cerejo, the guy who is responsible for vocal arrangements in ARR’s compositions and S-E-L’s. Husband/wife? Brother/Sister?

Dominique and Kunal’s voices complement each other very well on “No No”, her’s soft and silky and his husky-gruff-nasal-anglicised. Loy is probably the guy who’s chanting the English lyrics , and Chetan Shashital’s there for the Bachhan laugh.Trust me, the vocal arrangements are superb on this one.

“Aao Na” by Sadhna Sargam, Udit Narayan and Shankar Mahadevan ( his vocals uncreditted on the cover) is next. Slow melody, with brilliant strings, elevated to God-stature by Sadhna Sargam’s vocals. Parts of “Main Hoon” remind me of Remo’s “Shinga Linga” from Khamoshi:The Musical. Chetan Shashital gets Amitabh Bachchan’s voice just right in “Baat Samjha Karo”,, a song with much folksy overtones and bedroom-dance potential.

Ouch. I just thumped my head against the keyboard.

This is about all I can afford to type tonight, thanks.

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