Uncategorized

I am a little troubled by AR Rahman’s Jana Gana Mana. Not with the packaging – Times Music has released a beautiful CD+ DVD package, retailing at 399 Rs – but at the fact that the release is actually a RE-release. Everybody, including the Rahman experts seem to be ignoring that. And Rahman himself? The man who cried “foul” when Magnasound rereleased one of his private albums composed for Shubha, touting it as AR Rahman’s first English Language album, the man who went on record and split with a company that had brought out his first albums is happily floating on the publicity machine.

I bought the cassette of Jana Gana Mana in February 2000, in Sangeet Saagar, Hyderabad. Agonised over buying the CD version, which came with a free VCD ( note the technological leap we have taken in the last seven years. VCDs are gone, baby, gone. ), but unfortunately was priced at 500 Rs. Over the years, I would wait for the CD to be released without the VCD, for prices to be slashed, for some kind of sale where I could get it cheaper. But nothing of that sort happened, and I never did get around to buying it.

Will I buy it now? Don’t know really. 399 is still too high, in my opinion. The prices of DVDs are at an all-time low, with Moser-Baer cornering the market, and T-series releasing old favourites at 45 Rs. Even DVD stalwarts like Eros and Shemaroo are offering 99-Rs DVDs in a monsoon-sale offer, although their new offerings are still high-priced. I am betting prices will stabilise at around 150 Rs. Yashraj is the only company that is staying put at 300-plus prices, but who wants to buy YR DVDs anyway?

I believe there have also been a spate of Rahman “singles”. ‘One Love’, which is an ode to the Taj Mahal and features the same song in *shudder* multiple languages, and ‘Pray For Me Brother’, which has a train-wreck of a video. These must be the first ARR albums that I have consciously refused to buy.

I think the best ARR tune in recent times is that new Airtel ad, in which a kid plays in the rain and there is this bouncy melody going on in the background. It lasts for about a minute, but gets me everytime. I am not even sure it’s by ARR, but the voice and the music segue into the familiar Airtel tune and that’s why I think it’s him.

And oh, the DVD of Vishal’s The Blue Umbrella is out. Even before the movie has been released in Hyderabad. Bah!

Also, a fabulous article on 15 Years of AR Rahman.

Standard
Uncategorized

Which also reminds me

I put up a couple of new pages on my Comic Art Fans gallery. Stuff that I bought or picked up in the USA following time payments.

A Dark Victory page by Tim Sale. It’s in fact one of the last pages in the series – just before the final sequence. One of the best images of Two-face I have ever seen. If you think Tim Sale is a brilliant artist, you should hold a piece of his original art at close quarters and look at the details to appreciate HOW good he really is.

A Trinity page by Matt Wagner. The page has Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, and some of the coolest Matt Wagner inking you will ever see. I am a MW junkie, having discovered the guy’s work in the Demon miniseries published by DC in the 1980s. His recent work includes the Dark Moon Rising miniseries starring Batman, which are modern reimaginings of Batman’s earliest adventures. Batman and the Monster Men is the first Hugo Strange story, Batman and the Mad Monk tells the story of the vampirish Mad Monk, one of the earliest Bob Kane stories.

An Usagi Yojimbo pin-up by Stan Sakai. I don’t really know if this is a published pin-up, but Sakai tends to use these kind of inked drawings as back cover images or inside the comics as bonus pinup material. Someday I need to get my paws on an Usagi Yojimbo cover.

A Loveless page by Marcelo Frusin. Marcelo Frusin is another artist from Argentina who makes perfect use of black and white in his work, much like Risso, his fellow countryman ( I believe he trained under Risso for some time). Loveless is an ongoing Western comicbook series written by Brian Azzarrello, and this page is from one of the earliest issues. It’s also special because it’s inked, most of Frusin’s available art is pencils only.

A New X-Men page by Frank Quitely. Yes, I promised myself I will get more and more Frank Quitely art, and that’s exactly what I am doing. This is one of my favourite pages from Grant Morrison’s run on New X-Men.

Another Frank Quitely work, a sketch of Death. What can I say? I love the guy’s work.

A Starman page by Tony Harris. Starman, frankly speaking, is one of the most respectful DC series you will ever read. It brings a rich sense of history to a character whose shelf-life has been very choppy in the DC Universe, with multiple people taking on the mantle of Starman, with different powers and origins. James Robinson, Tony Harris and all the others who chipped in as the 80 issue series progressed revisited the history of Starman and brought a cohesiveness to it that blows all such reimaginings out of the water. This page also features the Golden Age Sandman, Wesley Dodds, from one of the best storylines in the series, called Sand and Stars.

Well, like ’em?

Standard
Uncategorized

Ah-some sah-s.

Comics artists interpreting literary figures and characters.

via Chris Weston’s blog. Weston has drawn the latest contribution to the site, Winston Smith and Big Brother from Orwell’s 1984, and Weston has this to say about his work –

“I ‘m particularily pleased with my depiction of Big Brother, which is a rare case of something turning out exactly as I saw it in my head. He’sa mash-up of propaganda images of Hitler, Stalin and Lord Kitchener.”

Personal favourites:

Eduardo Risso’s Sandokan.

David Mack’s Miyamoto Musashi.

Mike Mignola’s Jacob Marley.

Ben Templesmith’s Hunter S Thompson.

Bruce Timm’s HP Lovecraft

Dave McKean’s Salman Rushdie.

Tony DeZuniga’s Sherlock Holmes.

Jock’s Carlos Castaneda.

What a great idea for commissions!

Standard