Last Thursday I decided that enough was enough, and instead of spending my time looking for good Chinese/Japanese movies, I should spend some time watching the movies I already have. Thus started the Festival, and today, a week later, it’s still going strong. A movie per day, two per day on weekends, even with all the work that’s been piling up at the office. Immensely satisfying, trust me.

Demon City Shinjuku came first – a thoroughly popcorn movie, as I had already said.

Ringu next. Unfortunate soul as I was, I had already seen the English version – the remake, I mean, so this one was interesting on an academic level. As in, i found myself observing how Hideo Nakata’s vision differed from Gus van Sant’s product, how much it was Americanised, rather than watching the film for it’s content. The “horror” aspect in Ringu is very subtle – minimal reliance on traditional motifs like the background music ( the Hollywoodish tendency of the music going krakatoa on your eardrums whenever something “scary” happens does not happen here), very low blood-gore content, and the characters themselves possessing a degree of paranormal abilities, which I think van Sant cut out because it was too Unamerican. But of course, you need a cute kid widening their eyes and making ghostly predictions in Hollywood movies, especially after The Sixth Sense, so even the kid’s role was bumped up in the remake.

If I want you to jump out of your seats, I would recommend the English version. If you want to be gently mesmerised into submission, watch Ringu.

Then there was Fist of Legend and Iron Monkey, two movies I had watched earlier, but which I wanted to watch again, so I did. Enough wire-fu and adrenaline to last a week.

Bastard and Akira on Sunday, and two episodes of Cowboy Bebop. Akira was glorious, Otomo-san’s artwork and direction AND story alternately weird, creepy and goosepimply. The movie begins in silence, with a shot of Tokyo, 1988. ( The anime was made between 1984 and 1988 ) Then at the centre of the skyline, a small ball of light rises, expands and lights up the screen. You realise Tokyo is being razed to the ground, and the ball of light is an explosion of some kind, and by the time your fingers move to the volume control button ( obviously you would think that an explosion should have some kind of sound), the screen changes to a shot of Nu-Tokyo, circa 2030.

Trivia: Akira was first published in 1982, black-and-white manga format in Young magazine, created, written and drawn by Katsuhiro Otomo. Two years later, Otomo-san began production of the anime, and it was completed in 1988, and the comicbook was then continued to its conclusion . So the film tries to compress some 1400 pages of comicbook material, a part of which hadn’t even been committed to paper, to a two hour narrative. Amazing movie, and an amazing story. The comic was reprinted by Marvel’s Epic line in 1988 ( 38 issues/full colour) and recently, Dark Horse Comics has brought out the complete series, in black and white, spanning 6 300-page volumes.

Bastard, on the other hand, is a TV series which was never completed after six episodes. But those six episodes are hilarious!! The “bastard” in question is a wizard named Dark Schneider, a cackling windbag with a tendency to lose his clothes after every paranormal encounter, who has been summoned to the world after fifteen years of captivity inside a small boy’s psyche. He has been brought back to save the world from the Four Lords of Havoc, but nobody thought about the fact that Dark Schneider himself would want to rule the world instead of saving it. Hilarious references to eighties heavy metal bands, and neat-o action sequences. This one rocks!!!

Then yesterday I discovered this neat VCD of a movie called Master of The Flying Guillotine, part of the influences from which Kill Bill was made ( The “flying guillotine” happens to be the same contraption Gogo Yubari used on the Bride) The VCD was priced at 55 rupees, hallelujah. But then I watched the movie, and then realised just why it was priced so low.

You see, the movie was a Chinese one. Dubbed into English, says the vcd cover. Obviously, very badly dubbed. The fun starts when you are about twenty minutes into the movie. Situation: Father talking to Kungfu conscious daughter.

Father: Daughter. I am scared for you. The tournament is dangerous, there are a lot of evil men. ( voice goes up a register) Ling ming FON chou khu. Hayi kabo shiro NAKHIN toh. * (voice drops again) Do you want to fight them?

Daughter: Father, you are too scared for me. (voice changes) LEI lei hang shi phoo. Lei lei hang SHING?

Well, the crux of what I am trying to point out, with deliberate mutilation of a language alien to me (apologies to Chinese people dropping by. I am just trying to be funny, folks. Feel free to murder Hindi anyday, if that’s a consolation ), is that the dubbing in the VCD is weird. It skips to Chinese with subtitles for ten minutes, then comes back ( with different voices) in English without subtitles. Sometimes you can see a volume bar coming up and mysteriously adjusting itself.

None of this takes away the fact that the movie is awesome, and the fight sequences, jerky camera movements, the music – everything’s a representation of an undiluted Chinese action movie.

Next on the agenda: Italian Spaghetti-Western festival. I happen to have discovered VCDs of, among others, Death Rides A Horse, and countless other 70’s Western movies. And of course, rewatching the Sergio Leone collection wouldn’t be a bad idea either.

Right now, I don’t cook my own food. Primarily for two reasons – (a) We still don’t have a gas connection at home, because my previous roommate, he with the spanking new job and wife, absconded with the cylinder, the burner and the papers, ( which were in his name, so you can hardly blame him ). (b) I am a lazy bum. The most I can do to get some food down my throat is to pay someone some money ( either before or after I am fed ) or NOT pay someone any money and get fed and well, that’s it. Self-service is ok, too, the kind of self-service which involves getting a plate filled with food from one table to another.

So it was kind of an anomaly, me hunting around the fridge, late yesterday night, looking for things I can stuff down my throat and return to whatever it is I was doing ( more on that later ) and wasting as little time as possible. Usually, the fridge lies empty, our consummables not subjected to low temperatures because, well, as I just pointed out in (a), there be no high temperature-inducing entity that can make it eatable again. Bar the occasional doughnut from Baker’s Inn that no one ate the night it was bought, because they were too busy hogging on sandai kozhi from The Hub. ( sandai kozhi: country chicken, from what Jay tells me. I was trying to show off my savvy-ness of Tamil, but I believe in giving credit where it’s due. ) and which lies uneaten and untended to, till the time someone decides to do some social service ( the ants in our flat have a roaring social life ) and clears the fridge. So I was not too hopeful, as I opened the door of the refrigerator and peered inside.

It was a moment worthy of a John Williams theme, I tell you. The kind of theme music that changed Star Wars from a raft in cultural backwaters to the saviour of The Spaghetti Scifi as we know it now. ( Soaring strings, glorious choruses, the works ) For inside the fridge, I found an unopened pack of sliced bread ( If it were unsliced bread, I bet I would have balked at having to go to the kitchen and slicing it up ) and ( all of you please say “hallelujah” after me ) A PLASTIC CAN FILLED WITH CHICKEN. Just to make things clearer, the can had a label that read “The Hub” and the chicken inside was definitely dead and curryfied to a very appetising level ( as the standard test of dip-dinger-lick-finger-slurp showed) Right. So I was hungry, and my dear roommates, the guys who had gone out to have their dinner and get some for me in the process were late, so I decided to drop my aversion towards preparing my food and proceeded to shape the chunks of chicken curry on the slices, to make ( purists please do not crib! ) a variety of chicken sandwich.

All done in about five minutes and a half, and it took me just three more minutes to finish my humble concoction. I was happy, filled with the kind of bubbly Wodehousy happiness that wells up in you when you realise that there are hundreds of skunky aliens ready to die at your hands ( Half Life: Opposing Force for those who are interested ), and your mouse is a new optical one, and your hands have been rendered steadier because of your (very professional, if I may so ) ingenuous handling of the food that undoubtedly had been stored by one of your roommates for another day.

Sometime later, my roommates walk in, bearing a packet which I guessed was my dinner. Very pleased with myself ( and yet, acting very humble and semi-hungry), I informed them that I had been unable to withstand my sinful tummy’s questions, and had done so-and-so things with such-and-such things, and I was very sorry and all that.

And those buggers start laughing.

Seems the chicken curry was a week old. And they were planning to throw it out, but each thought that the other would do it, and hence it didn’t get thrown out, and that’s why it was so bloody frozen and for god’s sake, it was all in my freakin’ stomach now, so there wasn’t much I could do about it, was there? Hell. That’s the last time I indulge in culinary activities that involve frozen stuff in my fridge.All of a sudden, the aliens seemed much deadlier than before, and the fried rice that my conscentious friends, the lazy freakheads, had brought for me didn’t seem too palatable at all, so I chucked the game and dinner, and watched Akira instead.

Excerpt from ‘Frames of Mind: Reflections on Indian Cinema’, ed. Aruna Vasudev. The essay I have taken this from is Hindi Commercial Cinema – Changing Narrative Strategies by Rashmi Doraiswamy – a part where she talks about sexually explicit songs in Indian cinema. It was written sometime in the early 90’s, like most of the other essays in this book.

Since songs are uncensored – only completed films are subjected to censorship – and aired prior to the release of the film they can be as sexy as they like. Controversy, in fact, sometimes helps the film run. ‘Choli Ke Peeche’ from Subhash Ghai’s Khalnayak is a trendsetter in this respect, getting involved in a court case against alleged obscenity. The irony is that Ghai’s own ouvre has songs with far greater sexual innuendo: refer to ‘Saat Saheliyan Khadi Khadi’ from Vidhaata or to ‘Imli Ka Boota’ in Saudagar picturised with the aging thespians Dilip Kumar and Raj Kumar. This number opens up new avenues in notions of male bonding in Hindi commercial cinema: Dilip Kumar’s actions and ‘mudras’ are more feminine of the two and at the end of the song the two actors are on the bed.

Now let me admit, I have done a fair share of liberal interpretation of song situations in Hindi films. Most songs are howlarious – and I don’t mean the much-maligned songs of my generation, but the ‘classics’ everyone adores. ( Apparently, I am not alone in this, as the recent spate of remix videos point out. Man, those remixers sure know how to select a song with the right amount of double entendre ) But ‘Imli Ka Boota’? Male bonding? You learn something new everyday. I shall doff a hat to Miss Rashmi Doraiswamy’s intuitive deductions, and I shall make a promise to myself to go check out more Subhash Ghai movies for hitherto undiscovered allusions, and quietly giggle to myself, in the stilly nights ere slumber’s chains have bound me.

I watched Demon City Shinjuku, another anime movie by Yoshiaki Kawajiri,( the same guy who made Ninja Scroll ) Very stylish beginning, but the “Ten Years Later” blurb after the prologue jars. There’s action galore, and cinematic moments aplenty, a couple of extremely well-designed villains ( one of the personal highlights of Ninja Scroll were the villains, each with a unique modus operandi ) who engage themselves in cool fights with our Lone Hero, with none of the accompanying baggage like character developement or subplots. Nice popcorn movie.

Site of the Weekend: Scifi.com

Incredible. The sheer number of reviews of Yuva/Ayutha Ezuthu that I have been seeing all weekend makes me feel like I have watched the movie over and over again. The best part is the varying opinions. Man, this rocks, seriously.

Everytime Mani Ratnam makes a film, he also makes sure that the people who wait for the press releases and the inside information about his attempt have themselves a near-heart-attack – because everytime ( ever since the Mega Musical Show Dil Se flopped), he begins his moviemaking with a comment in the following vein – “No songs. Only background music.” Now come on! The only guy who can make ARR’s tunes come to visual life says something like this and we are supposed to take it lying down, eh? The good thing about Mani-sir is that he never keeps his promise. Somewhere down the line, five or six songs creep into the picture. I look at it this way – how do you resist someone like Rahman coming to you and saying something like this – “I have this new tune. Vairumuthu sir said we can use Jana Gana Mana to start the song. Something like…” ( hums Jana Gana Mana, which, at this stage, sounds like O Paalanhaare)

“No, AR, no songs, I have had enough of songs.”

“Yes, yes, of course. No songs, I forgot.” A beat. “Umm..I thought maybe I could sing a song or two, if there were songs. You know, for old times’ sake.”

“You…you would?”

“Why yes! The least I can do for an old friend!”

“You will sing three of the songs?”

“Three? Oh, ok. tell you what, I will sing in two, and hum in one. So there will be three songs, is that what you’re saying?”

“Humph. There will be six songs, that’s the only way we can hope to sell any albums.” ( to Asst Director) “Get me Vairumuthu Sir. Get me Mehboob. Ask the subtitles team to do some research on Sufi words.” ( turns to ARR )” And AR, I need some fast songs this time, man. Make Jana Gana Mana faster. I need club beats. Ethnic vocals. The works.”

Thus it begins, and all all is right in the land of Fan(aa)-dom.

The music of Ayutha Ezuthu, as is expected, is not exactly necessary for the movie to progress. But who would want to let go of those audiovisually-stunning cinematic moments, I ask you? Kareena Kapoor look good enough for me to actually smile when she’s onscreen. Even Esha Deol looks nicer than ever. The Mani-ARR combo works miracles, forsooth. Dol Dol was misused. I get to see a gas cylinder when Shahin Badar sings? Gah! Baadal ( Nenjam Ellam) comes at a VERY unworthy point in the film, which makes it go unnoticed. And was it me, or did Jana Gana Mana play twice? Chale Chalo from Lagaan was more activistic than this one, I would say, from the way it has been filmed.

Goosepimply moments in Background Score: the point when Lallan confronts Bandopadhyay, towards the end, has a cello-based rendition of Shahin Badar’s Dol vocals. Awesome!

The slow jazz version of Hey Goodbye Nanba that comes up in the romantic moments between Vivek and Kareena. I knew, from the song, that this was going to be used in the BGM somewhere.

The credits begin with a synth-female voice humming the tune of O Yuva Yuva, eerie and nice at the same time, I was expecting a more frenzied version. There is a point when a sample that sounds exactly like the opening bars of Whigfield’s Saturday Night plays onscreen, I forget at which point.

All in all, the background score does not have any “new” music, something a Mani Ratnam movie usually includes. ( Endendrum Punnagai, anyone? ) Predictably, the music between songs changes as variants of the song that has just gone by, and segues into a variant of the song that’s going to play next – typical Rahman background music. Sheesh. I wish the guy would do something standalone for the BGM once in a while.