{"id":584,"date":"2005-08-22T13:01:00","date_gmt":"2005-08-22T13:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/2005\/08\/of-how-the-placement-of-songs-sucketh-and-other-imaginable-things\/"},"modified":"2005-08-22T13:01:00","modified_gmt":"2005-08-22T13:01:00","slug":"of-how-the-placement-of-songs-sucketh-and-other-imaginable-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/2005\/08\/of-how-the-placement-of-songs-sucketh-and-other-imaginable-things\/","title":{"rendered":"Of how The Placement of Songs Sucketh, and other Imaginable Things"},"content":{"rendered":"

Early this year, I thought of keeping tabs on which movies I see over the next twelve months, and how many times. In part inspired by adgy<\/a>, and partly because the DVD buy\/watch ratio grew to somewhat alarming levels in December. Eight months later, I get the feeling that certain tasks should not be undertaken. New Year resolutions suck. Yeah, I have been watching too many movies.<\/p>\n

I watched 14 movies over the three-day weekend. Some of them were repeats, Jay and Silent Bob<\/i>, for instance, and Akira<\/i>, and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly<\/i>. <\/p>\n

Oldboy<\/i>. Finally managed to watch it last week. Park Chan Wook is God. Now to look out for the DVD of Sympathy For Lady Vengeance<\/i>. And watchJSA<\/i> sometime this week. <\/p>\n

The Rising<\/i>. Maybe because I spent 200 Rs for a ticket (at Inox, night show, dunno why the bastiches charge 200 for night shows), and maybe because I missed meeting Aamir Khan because I was watching Stealth<\/i> at five in the evening, the movie did not…I dunno….affect me the way I thought it would. No goosepimply moments, except at a bit towards the end. Aamir Khan rocks, Rani Mukherjee doesn’t. ( her tummy wobbles quite a bit throughout the movie, but that’s a rock of a different kind, I guess) Toby Stephen’s best lines are wasted, courtesy Om Puri’s bland-voiced commentary that pops up during any bit of English dialogue – Stephens also gets quite a bit of Hindi lines, which lose out on intensity and dramatic effect because it’s pretty obvious he is reciting<\/i> them. <\/p>\n

Some very interesting gaffes – an English lady mouths a very twentieth-century “Wow!” when she sees an elephant, one of the Indian villagers in one of the crowd scenes is wearing a pair of trousers and shoes.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, most of the songs do not fit into the narrative – except for the title song, which pops up at three different places, but again, the timeline is screwed up. I mean, the way the lyrics of the three versions are written – they evolve over a period of time. The closest analogy I can give is this. The first version, ‘Mangal’ is Rage Against The Machine’s ‘Wake Up’, beginning with an ear-grabbing refrain, and ending with an acoustic high – an appropriate background music for the birth of a hero. The second version, ‘Agni’, is like RATM’s ‘Killing in the Name’, sound, fury and the right amount of feeling throughout the song, echoing the call to arms. The third version ‘Aatma’ is calm, much like RATM’s ‘Beautiful World’ ( ok, ok, I know ‘Beautiful World’ is a cover, but I really cannot think of anything else that comes close to Quietly RATM), an ode to martyrdom, and tinged with a bit of poignancy. OK, so you see the setup, right? What happens in the movie is – the first version plays on the day Mangal Pandey is about to die ( and doesn’t, because of certain reasons you’ll discover if you watch the film), the second version plays during the flashback, very appropriate; and the last version plays on the next day, the day he actually dies. THEY SCREWED UP THE TIMELINE, GAAAAAAAAH!!!<\/p>\n

(You know, it’s surprising how anal I can get about minor things, but that’s just me, I guess….)<\/p>\n

And on top of that, I am lonely.<\/p>\n

Oh, before I forget, is a Live Journal community for discussing AR Rahman, the man and his music. Join, people, join!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Early this year, I thought of keeping tabs on which movies I see over the next twelve months, and how many times. In part inspired by adgy, and partly because the DVD buy\/watch ratio grew to somewhat alarming levels in December. Eight months later, I get the feeling that certain tasks should not be undertaken. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}