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There’s a Ghost…in the Shell.

In my 3rd year of college, psasidhar, then in final year, was The guy in the CSE department. He had the right contacts, an unshakeable reputation, and consequently, unlimited access to the (extremely slow) College Internet Line. He didn’t abuse this power, no sir. Except for the short time when he diverted all outgoing mails to trash while his script to download the complete Calvin and Hobbes strips from a site ran on the server and ate up the complete bandwidth, and I would hardly call that abuse.There were other such scripts, of course, the most notable one being a script that downloaded a CD-load of Windowmaker themes. I hardly used Linux even then, except for finishing weekly assignments, and that was a rare occurrence anyways. But Sasi’s themes forced me to use Window-maker, if only for to check out the cool wallpapers that came bundled with them.

Ghost in the Shell

And one of them was this, a sexy-looking woman with loads of attitude. As a little googing ( Yes, we did have google back then, a new curiousity that was waaay faster than Hotbot and Yahoo and all those trashy search engines that we depended on) showed, the lady’s name was Motoko Kusanagi, a character from a manga called Ghost in the Shell ( which I had vaguely heard about, right after The Matrix was released) by a guy named Masumone Shirow, and made into a movie by Mamoru Oshii.

I happened to watch Ghost in the Shell recently, after years of reading about its greatness, and about the influence it has had on mainstream movies like The Matrix, and the influences it has borrowed from cyberpunk traditions ( William Gibson, Bladerunner). I was not disappointed. Stylish without being overtly violent, with genuine “Oh-my-god” moments. As usual, it was the road to the movie that was more memorable. I got the comics from a Bandwidth-rich junior, then the soundtrack album a year later when I got my connection at home. Then the soundtrack to the sequel Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. Followed by the soundtrack of the TV series. Then found the DVD of Innocence, a version with terrible subtitles, in The Market. Then, a couple of weeks ago, the movie.

The soundtrack of the movie deserves a seperate post in itself. Kenji Kawai, the composer, uses a striking theme for the opening, called “The Making of Cyborg”, which is a choral piece in Japanese, backed with booming taiko drums and chimes. The chorus is hypnotic – I am left wondering which parts of it is synthetic and which parts sung by real people. “Ghost City” and “Reincarnation” play on variants of the same choral-drum theme. The second track is like just a bass drum playing a single beat, slow, evocative.

Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, also by Kawai has almost the same soundscape, with minor differences in tone and intensity. Brilliant, is all I have to say. So are the soundtracks to the TV series, which are composed by Yoko Kanno, the lady best known for her Cowboy Bebop compositions. As expected, these are tracks that cannot be slotted into a single genre, a single track might hop from a Big-band orchestral arrangement to spanish guitar music and then, as you are gasping for breath, move into heavy metal mode.

Trivia:

1) The title “Ghost in the Shell” comes from Arthur Koestler’s book The Ghost in the Machine, which also lends its name to an album by The Police. Koestler himself borrowed the term from a British philosopher named Gilbert Ryle who coined it to refute the Descartian ( or is that Cartesian) principle of seperation of mind and matter.

2) The US dubbed version of the movie had a track called “One Minute Warning”, with music by Brian Eno and U2. While this is nowhere to be seen on the official soundtrack album, I found it on a CD called Passengers, at a sale in Hyderabad. This was even before I got the manga.

Ironic Nostalgia Moment of the Day: This post, dated May 2003, where I mentioned the shock value associated with discovering a DVD of Ghost in the Shell at Music World. I did find it in Music World two years later. (not the genuine Music World, this is the shopping centre at Basheer Bagh that shares the same name) Now is that prophetic or what?

P.S: Some of Sasi’s wallpapers are now part of RECian legend – they were used (without any form of acknowledgement whatsoever) as backgrounds for the brochure of Trivium 2001, our very own Quiz Fest. Not the GITS one, much to my regret.

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BR2, Susannah Clarke, Bone and Cerebus

Battle Royale lovers be warned – Battle Royale 2: Requiem is to the first movie what Kisna is to Lagaan. Overblown acting, choppy cinematography, less-than-a-quarter-baked character developement, and a storyline that makes you want to gouge your eyes out and promise never to overestimate a movie sequel, even though it’s Japanese and claims to be “Asian Extreme Cinema”. To think I almost ordered this movie from cd-WOW a couple of months ago, and stopped myself because of this vague hope of finding it in National Market sometime. I did,on Monday night. Watched it. Yeaagh!

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And come to think of it, I have been watching too many movies lately. 26 movies in January, and 9 so far this month. Part of this is because of the DVDs I’ve been finding at National Market.

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England, London in particular, as visualized by Ms Susannah Clarke in the exquisite Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell haunted me for a week in January. It took me that much time to read the 800-odd page book. This hasn’t really happened before, my reading a paragraph and then rereading it. Generally, it is the story that takes me forward, rather than the prose. Susannah Clarke, however, made me pause and savour the rain-soaked, fog-swept streets and alleys of nineteenth century London, a world which has some shades of our world, and some of its own; the characters – quaint, unfantasylike names ( I absolutely hate fantasy stories have an overdose of z’s and x’s and q’s in the names of the characters) and demeanour. It’s not an action-packed magicfest, nope. Reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is more like a brisk walk on a misty winter morning – you know the chill isn’t going to last, and you know beautiful sights lie in store for you once the sun comes up. You shiver once in a while, wishing you were safely under your blanket in bed, but at the end, there’s nothing really like walking alone on a wintry morning. Call it English Magic, if you will.

Just when I was done with the book, I had the one-volume Bone, by Jeff Smith, delivered to me. Now I have read parts of Bone, mind you. Scattered issues towards the beginning, and a couple of story-arcs in the middle. But the joy of reading the complete story, end to end, is something that really cannot be expressed in words. Bone is funny one moment, touching the next, and the more I progress, the more of an epic heroic fantasy it’s trying to become. How can anyone not fall in love with the Moby-Dick loving Fone Bone, the guy whose hat bursts into flame the first time he sees Thorn bathing in the river? How can you not root for Gran’ma Rose as she races her cows? Yes, you heard that right, she races cows. She runs. I would kill to have a grandmother that can run neck-to-neck with a cow and occasionally pound those stupid, stupid rat creatures to a pulpy quiche.

And now that I am about to finish the Bone volume, I just got five volumes of the Cerebus trade paperbacks delivered to me yesterday. Three of them autographed by Dave Sim and Gerhard. Muhuhahahahaha.

Life is pretty much fun. I reserve the mornings for reading and the nights for movies, and I slog my ass off in the daytime. Suits me fine, I say.

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Endings

Damn! I hate bittersweet endings.

That said, let me add that Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy is an accomplishment that the man deserves to be knighted for. A fantasy series that juggles multiple worlds , and hold on, none of those worlds are your stereotypical humanoid-infested cesspools. A storyline that borders on the blasphemous ( with regards to Christianity), and a gamut of interesting characters, Pullman’s major strength being ( I think I have said this before, with regards to the Sally Lockhart stories) his ability to make his characters meet a final end without prolonging the outcome or making it overly dramatic. Precisely the reason why the reader ( me, in this case) is always on his toes, not knowing what’s going to happen on the next page.

One of the blessings about the series is the lack of hype. This is “essential” fantasy, no doubt ,but hardly storypimped on newspaper articles the way Potter or the Rings trilogy are – you know, plot points and conclusions being thrown at the reader’s face in two-line blurbs. I had not known anything about His Dark Materials, other than the concept of daemons which, frankly speaking, was not too intriguing. So the storyline, as it progressed, was like being on this frying pan that gets hotter and hotter, making you jump and squeal, at different points, with rage, frustration and sheer happiness.

It took me a long time to finish the three books. A conscious attempt on my part not to hurry through. Waited a month after reading Northern Lights ( which is mostly known by the other name The Golden Compass). Took a week to read The Subtle Knife, and it was extremely difficult to postpone reading the third book for more than two weeks. (Note: while prolonging reading pleasure, indulging in other tasteful reading material, such as Feluda stories, immensely helps.) So, after my mom left, I picked up The Amber Spyglass, and last night, it got done. Damn ending. Kept me awake until three AM, staring vacantly at the ceiling.

Will, Lyra, Serrafina Pekkala, Ruta Skudi, Pantalaimon, Iorek, Lee Scoresby, Mary Malone, you too, Mrs Coulter, John Faa, madhav, I love you all.

Now let’s all wait until the sanitised version of the story comes out , courtesy Hollywood. They raped Homer, after all, so who be thee, Mr Pullman, to escape their clutches? Better grin and bear it, when the time comes.

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La-di-la

I wish it would rain, so I could go out and sing “Singin’ In the Rain”. D-uh, I am happy! My deadline just got postponed by a week, so I can calmly write all the stuff and go ahead with actually testing it all before committing any of it. Trust me, that’s so comforting, I can think of other things right now.

Like going to the Book Fair tonight. Or of kicking some alien poo-poo in Halo. Getting a cable connection at home. Thinking of things to buy with my up-and-coming credit card. And not thinking about the seven things I gotta do. Heh.

I got into this semi-argument with Navs today morning, on YM. He has been reading Stardust, not the film rag, but the Gaiman novel, and in the first chapter or thereabouts, there is this love-making episode. Pretty innocuous one, too. But Navs felt that it was Out Of Place. “An adult comic book with a love-making scene? What is this – Harold Robbins or something?” , and “It’s ok if the story merits it, but a scene out of the blue! I wasn’t expecting it.” and “If I wanted a sex scene, I would rather read Playboy or Nancy Friday.” and “Ian Fleming never wrote more than a line whem it came to Bond’s sexcapades.” and words to that effect.

Hmm. Now I had a slight problem with that. Frankly, I just couldn’t see why he had a problem with it. I mean, look at this, this is the scene in its entirety.

She said nothing. Dunstan pulled her toward him, wiping ineffectually at her face with his big hand; and then he leaned into her sobbing face and, tentatively, uncertain of whether or not he was doing the correct thing given the circumstances, he kissed her, full upon her burning lips.
There was a moment of hesitation, and then her mouth opened against his, and her tongue slid into his mouth, and he was, under the strange stars, utterly, irrevocably, lost.
He had kissed before, with the girls of the village, but he had gone no further.
His hand felt her small breasts through the silk of her dress, touched the hard nubs of her nipples. She clung to him, hard, as if she were drowning, fumbling with his shirt, with his britches.
She was so small; he was scared he would hurt her and break her. He did not. She wriggled and writhed beneath him, gasping and kicking, and guiding him with her hand.
She placed a hundred burning kisses on his face and chest, and then she was above him, straddling him, gasping and laughing, sweating and slippery as a minnow, and he was arch-ing and pushing and exulting, his head full of her and only her, and had he known her name he would have called it out aloud.
At the end, he would have pulled out, but she held him inside her, wrapped her legs around him, pushed against him so hard that he felt that the two of them occupied the same place in the universe. As if, for one powerful, engulfing mo-ment, they were the same person, giving and receiving, as the stars faded into the predawn sky.
They lay together, side by side.
The faerie woman adjusted her silk robe and was once more decorously covered. Dunstan pulled his britches back up, with regret. He squeezed her small hand in his.
The sweat dried on his skin, and he felt chilled and lonely.

(c) Neil Gaiman . Reprinted without permission, but I am sure he wouldn’t disapprove.

I found this very descriptive, yes, and also very “literary”. Nothing titillating or vulgar about the whole thing. And yes, isn’t it infinitely better than saying – “Dunstan kissed her full on her burning lips. They made tender love in the moonlight. And as the stars faded in the predawn sky, they lay side by side.” ???

Again, I don’t see why it’s wrong to have a love scene in a fairytale, adult or otherwise. (try reading Anne Rice’s Sleeping Beauty series, with its graphic s&m scenes and you will know what I mean) Besides, it’s hardly plausible to see characters in any book behave like Disneyfied nincompoops – or to read an author who is descriptive when it comes to explaining the internal working of a Walther PPK, but coughs away certain aspects of a character’s daily(????) life because he wants to preserve the sanctity of Holy Humanity as laid down by Her Late Royal Highness Empress Victoria.

Hmm, or was it Navs pulling my leg?

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