Music to Clean My Room By

Robert Rodriguez, god of classy B-flicks and campy kid movies, has decided to make a movie out of one of the best crime comics in the business – Frank Miller’s Sin City. Rodriguez being Rodriguez, even rediff.com has carried the story, with A-list star names being dropped around, names like Elijah Wood, Leonardo DiCaprio and Bruce Willis – even Brittany Murphy. Of course, rediff being rediff, it says that ” it is an adaptation of Frank Miller’s novel series”. How convenient.

The film has been making news because it seems Rodriguez resigned from the Director’s Guild recently. Why? Because he wants to bring in Frank Miller as co-director, and the Director’s Guild wouldn’t allow him. Some say that Tarantino has been solicitated to direct one of the three arcs that make up the story. Fingers crossed.

Aintitcoolnews has this interesting story about how Rodriguez got Miller’s permission to make the movie. Seems he did some clandestine preparations, developed a script using three different Sin City stories – and then shot a 9-minute long opening sequence. He invited Miller over for a private screening, saying that even if the creator didn’t like what he saw, he would have something to show people later. Miller agreed, and in aintitcool’s own words, “Frank fell in love”.

On Sin City comics, and personal opinions about the movie

This is what happens when you switch on the fan in my room.

Just for the record, I stay in Hyderabad. This fair city plays host to this guy, a big lug named Summer, who is presumably working in one of the IT companies around here. The bugger just doesn’t let up on his job. Sometime around December, his sibling, a guy named Winter tries to tell him to go get a life, and kicks him out the apartment with strict words of advice, something to the effect of “Go South, Young Man!”. Two months, however, is the maximum span of time Summer can stay away from his beloved Hyderabad. And two months later, he’s back, and he’s decided to stay put, sibling advice be damned. That should explain why I talk of switching on the fan in my room.

It starts off, with a sound that’s a cross between that you hear when they’re opening the Black Gates of Mordor and the creaking sound reminiscent of the best of the Ramsay horror (?) films – the kind when you have this old man trying to look scary while holding a lantern in one hand and opening a creaky door with the other. Worse, actually. The blades of the fan wage a noisy war against the molecules of air ( superheated beyond belief, Summer being happily ensconced in this domain ), heaving and puffing against invisible barriers. Gears shake and rattle, hidden wires inside the ceiling untangle or get tangled even more, of course I wouldn’t know which. And then the creak changes to a wail that would give a Banshee laryngitis ( or a bad hangover ). For an instant, for several instants, actually, there is a lurch, as the fan, as a single Entity, vibrates and wails and creaks all at the same time. The air molecules reluctantly give in, or probably they are worried at the condition of le fan. There is a perceptible increase in rotational velocity. The creaking continues, the wails die down. The air molecules decide to abide by laws of nature and lower their temperature. And you, hapless observer, can take your finger off the switch and your eyes off the fan, and you can come in and seat yourself.

Be warned, though. The relief is temporary. There are malevolent forces at work inside the Object That Fans. Keep an eye on your watch ( not on the clock on my table, nosirree, the battery inside is an archaeological marvel ), and watch the minutes tick away with trepidation. Keep an ear alert for the changing sounds that emanate from the Being Whirling Above. Has fifteen minutes passed? It’s time. Feel the abrupt change in the flow of air to your body – look up, you shall see the vibrations have begun again, and then ( because sound is a wee bit slower than light ) you will hear the screeching a thousand cute babies make when you feed them a complete bottle of pudin hara each. Your instincts take over and you leap for the switch – but hark, a minute of your time. Stay you hand, and watch. The Being quivers, it belches, it complains, and finally it rests.

Of course, the infernal screaming continues. It will continue, and many things along with it – but I wouldn’t advise you to further my sadistic temperament by listening to, and watching, the Object of Our Undivided Attention So Far . You can switch off the…er…switch. Oh Sweet mercy, you say. The silence is bliss.

Now listen closely and you will hear Summer laughing his head off.

P.S I know, I know, it’s time now to descend into Hell.Time to call an electrician.

• Hey GoodBye Nanba – Sunitha Sarathy’s voice makes me horny. Especially the “Ssshhh” at the end.
• Jana Gana Mana refuses to go out of my head. The bass loop might be something a stupid Frooty Loops user created, using a random map. 2:15 to 2:35 rocks like nothing else.
• Sandai Kozhi – Madhushree’s voice sucks. It’s like a bad imitation of Alka Yagnik and Sadhna Sargam at the same time. Happy crap.
• Dol Dol. Talvin Singh ripoff, at least the beats. Shahin Badar’s ethnic vocals are anything but ethnic. At least Blaaze does not spoil the rap portions like that George Peters guy did in Lakeer. Bang Bang indeed.
• Nenjam Ellam – Adnan Sami trying out variants of a Tamil phrase ( I won’t embarass myself by trying to repeat the phrase, I dunno Tamil anyways ) between 1:30 and 1:45 sounds like the guy in Ila Arun’s Vote For Ghaghra, saying “Tu Kaye Boli”. How does acoustic bass sound with a breakbeat and synthetic instruments? Pretty good, as far as this song goes.
• Yakkai Thiri. Fanaa. Supposed to be High Vairumuthu Poetry mixed with frenzied electronics and vocals. I don’t know about the poetry, but this sounds pretty frenzied, all right. Rahman’s vocals make it alternately cheesy and High Musicmanship. I end up hating the aalap at the end one time, and liking it some other time.

The score stays in the same territory that Rahman covered in Kaadhal Virus and Boys, dollops of electronica mixed with traditional instruments, nothing like conventional film-tracks. Of course it does not lack in melody, but there are very few portions that are hummable. ( Huh, if I wanted hummable I would listen to Himesh Hum Hum Reshammiya! ) It’s kind of like the Matrix scores by Don Davis, very loud at times and you cannot just put the music on in the background and do something else, unless you are accustomed to some degrees of heavy metal/electronica.

It would be interesting to see how my opinions on this album will differ after…say…15 days.

I had been looking for a DVD of Army of Darkness, the third movie in the Evil Dead trilogy by Sam Raimi. If you look around, you’ll find a lot of movies which claim to be Evil Dead V or Evil Dead XI – The Return, especially in small-town video parlours, but those are mostly bootleg namegrabbing opportunists out to make some money from the franchise, or some arbit C-movie ( in all probability dubbed from Italian, with flesh-shows and bad editting) with the label.

Brainless retelling of events