Angst In My Pangst

Reading Day Watch – going very slow, and am totally loving the twists that come with it. The cover of the book is a terrible photographic collage, with a male model, wearing sunglasses with a flashlight in hand. ( Remove your sunglasses if it’s dark around you, moron!) There’s an owl on the cover as well, and I know one of the characters is an owl, but that character appeared in Night Watch, and doesn’t even make an appearance so far ( I am about half-way into the book). The book is in first-person, just like NW, but the people speaking are different – seemingly-minor characters from the first book. Anton Gorodetsky, the protagonist of the first book does appear, but the important point is – this book is about the enemy, the Bad Guys, so to speak, especially if you were rooting for the Night Watch before. But I am still surprised at Lukyanenko’s world-building audacity, he’s managed not to contradict himself even once, with all the rules that he has set up in the world of The Others.

It gives me great pleasure to know that Dusk Watch, the third book in the tetralogy, is coming out in June. Day Watch is also being released in the US at about that time, I believe.

You know how awesome it feels to have a smashing three-day weekend and to come into the office and find out you got an art package in the mail? An art package that was sent just four days ago from the US, at that.

Rahman’s Water soundtrack has been out for quite in music-stores for sometime now. Just after the Oscar nominations were announced, in fact. I had gotten the German release of the OST thanks to fus, and at the back, it had “Not for sale in the Indian subcontinent”. Well, the Academy awards seem to be a great plus-point for the Indian authorities to realise that – you know, the movie might actually be good. So they’ve finally released the OST, and the movie’s out too, I guess. Or will be, soon. Check out the soundtrack, Rahman named it his best effort so far.

Also out is the Pray For Me Brother single, in a barebones CD and a special edition that has a free DVD. Strangely enough, I was not at all tempted to buy it when I saw it in Music World, and good thing I didn’t. Chandru already had a copy, and I took it home to burn check it out, and the song is just so-so. The lyrics really make me cringe. What’s it with the terrible rap that Blaaze sings? I mean, is it mandatory for a song aimed at an international audience to have a rap piece in the middle? And what’s with the video anyways? Why does it end with an about-to-seperate couple making up tearfully after seeing Rahman in the middle of the road? What’s that got to do with world poverty? “Bharatbala has got a thing for wind machines”, Rahman giggles in the interview on the bonus DVD, referring to the shots in the desert where ARR, dressed up in jeans and jacket, puts up his hands in the air ( like he just doesn’t care) and lip-syncs terribly to the song while huge winds blow sand in his face.

Instead of picking it up, I bought a CD of Ishqa Ishqa, which is now rebranded as Gulzar’s Ishqa Ishqa, maybe because in its earlier release as Rekha Bharadwaj’s debut album, it didn’t really burn up the charts. Rekha Bharadwaj ( not to confused with Reena Bharadwaj, she of the Meenaxi: Tale of 3 Cities fame) is Vishal Bharadwaj’s wife, whose husky voice made ‘Namak’ and ‘Lakad’ the pleasure-point-stimulators of last year, and this album has Gulzar’s lyrics, her voice and Vishal’s compositions, all for 145 Rs. What’s not to like? Interestingly, I read the liner notes to find out that the dancing lady on the cover is Manjari Chaturvedi, who performs Kathak to Sufi music, and I attended one of her concerts in Hyderabad last year.

Moser Baer has bought rights to quite a few Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam and Hindi movies and is bringing out DVDs for 34 INR and VCDs for 28 INR. Truly mind-boggling prices, and offers stiff competition to the shops at National Market and their ilk. I bought the DVD of Armaan last night, just because I could not find the soundtrack to the film anywhere, and played it for a bit. The discs seem to be double-layer ones with very good picture quality, points to Moser Baer. Has chapter and song breaks, one more points. No audio options, minus one. No subtitles, which totally kills the reason why I would want to buy a non-Hindi title. Also, there is the irritating “moser baer” watermark on the top left of the screen, pretty common in legit Indian DVDs, though I think the DVD spec prohibits it. Collection’s not really up to par as of now, but I am assuming other companies will have to slash prices to keep up. Bueno!