So I have a 750 rs book coupon for Premiere Book Store, and for the life of me, I can’t think of what to buy. I thought of getting Shantaram, but not only was the book out of stock, but I sincerely doubt if adding to my backlist is going to do me any good right now.

I was actually thinking of buying The Never Ending Story, which I remember seeing the last time I was at Premiere. Unfortunately, that was about a month and a half ago, and that book seems to have disappeared.

There’s also Anita and Me, but again….*sigh* reading Meg Cabot’s Princess Diaries has spoiled me silly, and I doubt if I would enjoy teenage reminiscences of someone who is NOT Amelia Thermopolis.

Wolves of the Calla is buyable. But I would rather wait for Best Book Stall to come up with killer discounts/second-hand stock. And I need to read at least part of the first four books again before my fantasy-trilogy-quadrology-pentalogy-addled brain makes any sense out of the storyline. Come to think of it, I still haven’t read Black House just because I want to read The Talisman again.

Premiere does not have any movie/music related books. The only ones I saw were Bob Dylan’s Chronicles Vol 1 which I am not remotely interested in, and Bunny Reuben’s biography of Pran. (Because of reasons too strange to delve into, the book is named “…and Pran”. Something as monumentally weird as “…aur Pyaar Ho Gaya”, which translated into English means “..and Love Happened”, which at least makes an iota of sense. )

eBay.com, on the other hand, tempts me, with a cornucopia of graphic-novel-related Items for Sale, even during low-seller-ridden Holidays. ( Did you know that Sidney Sheldon uses the word “cornucopia” at least once in each of his books? Erm…books?) There was someone selling The Complete Baby Cart Series ( you know, those six blood-and-gore cinematic renditions of the Lone Wolf and Cub books) for very cheap, and I was about to click on on the buy-it-now button, when I noticed the small print. “Only French/Chinese Subtitles”. Great. A little more brain-addledness on my part and I would have sworn off eBay for …I dunno….at least three months. I don’t think that would have been too bad, either.

This reminds me of this incident a couple of days back. I was browsing through baazee.com, and suddenly came across this listing of a near-complete volume of Harijan. The newspaper that was begun by MK Gandhi sometime in the forties, there were about four hundred issues on sale, and the quick-buy option said “rupees one thousand only”. Saying that I was excited would be an understatement. But the listing also said that this gentleman was based in Chennai and he would be selling them only after he met the buyer personally. A phone number was included in the listing.

I called him up. Enquired about the listing. He said they are all in Mint condition. Carefully stored in four Bound Volumes ( My heart sank a little at this. I am not a fan of Bound Volumes )

Then, there is a thud, which is the sound of my heart that breaks when the person clarifies the price. “A thousand rupees”, he says, “Per issue.” The total would have come to 4.5 lakh rupees, but “I am willing to bargain. I am not expecting more than three lakh.”

Gulp. I didn’t explain why my interest level in his collection dipped all of a sudden, but I managed to cough up some apologetic phrases and kept the phone down. Whew. Collectors are scary people.

Back to the point. Seven fifty rupees. And no idea what to buy. I hate myself.

Chasing Amy was different from the other Kevin Smith movies I have seen. For a change, the story places emphasis on human emotions other than comicbook jokes and the one-man motormouth that is Jason lee. Don’t get me wrong, I love Jason Lee, I love comicbooks, but yikes, Jason Lee in a romantic comedy? FYI, bet Ben Affleck can beat Hemant Birje as far as wooden acting is concerned.

Ryuhei Kitamura’s Versus was fun. Zombies, Japanese Gangsters ( I refuse to call them “yakuza” just because they were wearing business suits), martial arts, bad moves, five-hundred-year old curses reincarnated warriors ( I refuse to call them “samurai” just because they fought with katanas). I know most people woul sigh and shake their heads sadly if I pass this DVD to them, but please, there is a reason such movies are made, you know.

Tim Burton’s Big Fish was something I had wanted to see a long time. Amazing how this guy comes up with such storylines. Ewan McGregor’s cartoony earnestness, the wacky storyline, the emotional ending- truly well-made. Somebody give Billy Crudup a raise!

Almost Famous – The Bootleg Edition. Superb, just like the first time.

Ocean’s Twelve – Yikes. Soderbergh trying too hard to be gripping and witty? I know, I know, these are the coolest stars around, and I know they are supposed to be master-thieves, but can’t they talk and think like normal people some time? And was that laser-thingie supposed to be a spoof of Entrapment?

The Incredibles – Brad Bird added to Personal Pantheon. I dunno why, but this movie made me want to run and reread Watchmen.

Identity was decent. But it takes the whole MPD/DPD-thriller genre to the furthest limits of viewer-patience.

Kurosawa’s Sanjuro was hilarious!

Dead End was a really well-scripted movie. A horror movie that has genuinely funny moments, and oh-whoa-what-just-happened sequences. I want to watch it again.

Shaun of the Dead. Funny as hell!

Caligula was tolerable. I think I would have enjoyed it more had I seen it when I was in college.

Among other odds and ends, finally saw Jism – about two-thirds of the film on some random channel. Also a very funny movie starring Dharmendra as Agent 116 and Rekha in dresses that would put Mallika Sherawat to shame. Prem Chopra has a role that consists of maniacal laughter and a few lines here and there. Damn, I want to buy this one.

Bjork’s Volumen, a collection of her early videos ( no, vrikodhara, I am afraid that does not have the Pagan Poetry video, which I would have loved to watch myself ). Very surreal videos, all of them, and I was trying to keep an eye out for the Michel Gondry video that was supposed to be the precursor of Bullet-time Photography. I think it was Army of Me, but I am not too sure.

Also catching up on episodes of old Batman Adventures episodes. I seem to have bought a DVD which has about thirty-two episodes of the TV series that ended my budding violin-playing career. ( details later)

Watched Today: Castle of Cagliostro. Early Miyazaki, though I doubt if it was him directing. I think he was just the scriptwriter (Just amazon-ed, and whaddya know, it’s really him directing. It’s a 1979 movie, and his first! )

Additional note: Need to find more info about the Maurice LeBlanc novels on which the Lupin character is based.

As part of my one-and-a-half-movie per day binge, I saw Ju-On and Ju-On 2 last week.

Takeshi Shimuzu made Ju-On as a low-budget, TV movie. Then he made the sequel. Somebody decided that the TV movies had immense potential, and gave him a cartload of money which he used to make Ju-On: The Grudge and Ju-On 2: The Final Grudge, which were remakes of the first two movies. And then someone from across the ocean ( Sam Raimi to be precise) saw the Japanese movies and gave Mr Shimuzu twenty cartloads of money and a busty babe ( Sarah Michelle Gellar) and the director decided to do what he does best – he made his own movie again. Man, this guy sure likes his job.

But that’s beside the point. As I was saying, I watched Ju-On and Ju-On 2, which were actually the third and fourth movies ( see above). I watched it the way horror movies are meant to be watched, at night, with the lights switched off, and I would have seen it alone had it not been for my movie-loving colleague (prashantr )who insisted we see it together. “Damn”, I thought, just before we began, “I hope I enjoy this.” This was because some fine Factory-going folks had liked the idea of an eerie-looking kid staring at the camera with his legs curled up to his chin, and had proceeded to make everyone in a fine Factory-produced movie look eerie and stare at the camera. (Vaastu Shastra, for the uninitiated)

Half an hour into Ju-On, I was glad I wasn’t watching it alone. I was also shit-scared.

The way I tackle a horror movie is this – whenever there is no background music to be heard, it means someone’s behind the camera and the pretty young thing/thang is going to have his guts chomped out. Whenever there’s scary music coming by, it implies that there is a cat making that scary sound the PYT is trying to find out more about,and the music is playing you for a sucker. Whenever there is gore/blood/angst, you just think of the make-up man who’s worked hard to get the product you’re seeing on screen. You think of the director who’s probably grinning in the chair, thinking of the moolah his scary movie will make. You think of what probably happens once the shot is over, the protagonists sharing a cup of coffee and a good laugh about the scare-shots of the day. And most of the time, everything’s dark and hazy, and you know the real scary part is going to come at the end of the movie, when ( if you’re lucky enough, and the crew has a good team on prosthetics and make-up ) you come to the Big Scare, the orgasmic moment you’ve been waiting for.

With Ju-On, I was caught a little..off-guard.

I know there is a scary-looking kid involved. I know it’s about a curse. But man-o-man-o-man, I was not prepared for this. The opening sequence, shot in grainy filters. The non-linear story. What happens to you when you try hiding under a blanket. How creepy the sight of a silent old woman can be. The effectiveness of a no-holds-barred scream. (it’s tough to find an actress who screams out loud without you silently urging her to die quicker and scream a little less) The sheer effectiveness of minimal music, or no music at all. Methinks Amar Mohile and the rest of the noisy synth-mongers in the Indian Horror Movie scene can learn much from Ju-On.

When the movie was over, we decided to watch a little bit of Caligula, to get over the freaked-outness. The movie didn’t really gel, not even the sight of Roman nymphets in innovative positions and the brother-sister romp in the woods. Off to bed we went.

The next night, there was a decision to be taken. Do we go ahead and watch a sequel, which, going by the law of averages, would be trashier than the original, and far less scarier, thereby nullifying the nice memories of the previous night? Or do we go for the safer Big Fish? Or something more sedate, like American Chai? “The heck with it, let’s watch Ju-On 2”, was the decision. Fifteen minutes into the movie, we nearly gave up – the knot in my tummy was actually unravelling to that semi-annoying, semi-bored state which says – “oh get it over with already” – because the buildup was a little more convoluted this time.

Well, the movie turned out to be scarier than the first one. And weirder. Gave a whole new meaning to the concept of parallel storylines. It was really two things happening to the same two persons at the same time.

Right. The movie ends. We say – “Another movie.” I go to the DVD player and take the DVD out. Cover in one hand, disc in the other. I sneak a peek at the cover, at the kid with the eerie stare, and blink, allowing the goosepimples to subside.

Powercut.

I am not really proud of my jittery reactions that night. It was dark, and we didn’t have a candle, and as we sat in the darkness with our cellphones clutched in our hands ( with their reassuring glow), we talked about things too asinine to mention here, to take our minds off the movie. Weird sounds, magnified a hundredfold because of The Ju-On Effect came floating from the kitchen. (Prashant: “The rats are really acting up tonight”. Nervous giggle. Me: “Yeah.” Gulp. “They sound a little..different.” ) There was a skitter, just like the way the dead girl made when she slid down the stairs. A thump, like that of the girl and her boyfriend who ended up swinging in the living room. Finally, as a dish crashed to the ground – we could take it no longer, and went out for a walk in the garden, where it was considerably brighter than in our living room, and yakked a bit until a grumpy lady from the flat above shouted at us.

I did manage to fall asleep, and there were no nightmares, and we laughed over it the next day. But you know what – we were really scared that night.

Ringu didn’t affect me a lot, maybe because I had seen the English version before the Japanese, and was prepared for the story and its twists ( the shock-effects in the US version were predictable, except for the flash of the dead girl with a horrified expression in the cupboard) Ju-On did. My record as unscaring movie-goer is thus laid to rest. How’s that for a confession?

A.k.a “Further Notice”.

I am currently watching movies at the rate of one and a half per day. However I’m buying movies (DVDs, that is) at the rate of four per week. Which makes it the first time in a long while that I am consuming something faster than I am getting it. Oh, no, wait. I have also borrowed DVDs at the rate of five per week, so maybe that evens things up a bit.

I wonder how many people will buy this because of this coming out.

I ordered myself a copy of The Complete Bone: One Volume Edition for Christmas and New Year ( yes, yes, excuses are indeed possible when you make your first amazon.com purchase). This one’s the paperback version, of course. The Hardcover Limited Edition ( 2000 copies, each numbered and signed by Jeff Smith) sold out, and as Ms. Vijaya Iyer over at the Boneville website told me, it would have cost me an additional 50$ to get it shipped, in addition to the $125 price. Which is, as many would agree, a slightly high price to pay for a 1150-page graphic novel. How am I getting this then, the humble softcover version, you ask? (You must ask, for Amazon’s international shipping rates suck bigtime. In fact, I would venture to say that they suck harder than an acrophobic vacuum cleaner stuck atop a palm tree.) Oooky-san to the rescue again!

Finally bought Jacques Tardi and Leo Malet’s The Bloody Streets of Paris. Which shows how much timing and patience pays off. The original price of the book, if you’ll recall me saying at the beginning of this year, was above 600 Rs. I found it, in a half-hidden ( which I definitely would have never entered if not for a book about the Grateful Dead in America that I saw on display. And to tell you the truth, I wouldn’t even have dreamed that the place would have TBSOP if not for the two ladies inside talking about “Oh-one-of-those-graphic-novel-thingies-You-know-I-read-Corridor-and-hated-it” and “I-don’t-know-why-people-make-such-a-big-deal-out-of-them.”

“Thank you, Sarnath Bannerjee”, I breathed, once the lady in question kept the book back and I checked the price tag. It was on sale for 300 Rs. Less than half of the actual cost. Whoopee-de-yay!

Also picked up Once Upon A Time In China: A Guide To Hongkong, Taiwanese, and Mainland Chinese Cinema from the same place. Which was kinda ironic, because we got trounced the same evening in a quiz that was heavily Sino-specific (something tells me I shouldn’t say Sino-erm-oriented…). And a pack of 1960’s Gold Key and Tower comics.

I don’t believe this, but I actually saw a Bill Hicks CD (Philosophy: The Best of Bill Hicks)on sale at Music World the other day. The price was outrageous, because it was a Music Gallery Import ( 600 Rs, would you believe that?) The only good thing about this discovery is that I already have a copy of this particular CD, the one that adgy burned for me. Hyuk.

I haven’t bought the soundtrack of Kisna yet, because there are rumours of a 2-cd Collector’s Edition floating around, with additional background tracks. Remember Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities? I bought it twice because of the Edition later that came with MF Hussain postcards. You don’t catch me unawares twice, nossireebob.

Currently reading: A Barnstormer In Oz, Philip Jose Farmer’s take on the land of Oz and its inhabitants and what happens when Dorothy’s son (who’s a pilot) lands there and, among other things, proceeds to have a crush on Glinda The Good, who is “more beautiful than mom ever told me she was. And she has better legs than anyone I’ve seen.” Hyuk.

Dead Until Further Notice.