{"id":725,"date":"2005-02-28T18:37:00","date_gmt":"2005-02-28T18:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/2005\/02\/shiny-happy-happy-shiny\/"},"modified":"2005-02-28T18:37:00","modified_gmt":"2005-02-28T18:37:00","slug":"shiny-happy-happy-shiny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/2005\/02\/shiny-happy-happy-shiny\/","title":{"rendered":"Shiny Happy Happy Shiny"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As it turns out, I have been mispelling a writer&#8217;s name. Inspite of having read <i>Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell<\/i>, it took me a google search to figure out that Susanna Clarke&#8217;s first name is *not* spelt &#8220;Susannah&#8221;. Damn. Which means that the teeny  little disclaimer about perfect spelling on my user-info does not hold good any longer. I swear &#8211; if I had a knife nearby, and if I wasn&#8217;t so chicken-hearted, I would be slicing off my little finger in disgrace. <\/p>\n<p>Couple of happy things:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>  I bought myself a complete set of the six <b>Akira<\/b> graphic novels on eBay. And a set of <b>Daredevil<\/b>, issues 26-69, the delectable Brian Bendis\/Alex Maleev run from the same seller.<\/li>\n<li>Discovered the joys of Berke Breathed&#8217;s lovely comic series <b>Bloom County<\/b>. Got some of the collected volumes off a sale for 50 rupees each. It was the sight of the dog pushing the wheelchair of a Vietnam vet, both quoting Star Trek, that brought me to this conclusion. Highly recommended.<\/li>\n<li>My Andrew Vachss collection is now technically complete. I have all the books until <b>Pain Management<\/b> (2001), which is fifteen books in all. I haven&#8217;t seen the newer novels in stores anywhere in India.<\/li>\n<li>Picked up a first-edition copy of <b>Gods, Demons and Others<\/b> by RK Narayan (with the dust jacket intact) for 100 Rs. This was one of the first books I bought with my own money, sometime in December 1988, and I don&#8217;t really remember where the copy is, right now. But getting this version made me real happy. I loved the delightful tone of voice in which RK Narayan narrated these stories, when I read this book the first time &#8211; inspite of knowing most of them by heart ( courtesy <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amarchitrakatha.com\">Amar Chitra Katha<\/a>.\n<\/ul>\n<p>The more Takeshi Kitano movies I watch, the more convinced I am that the guy is the Japanese equivalent of Shah Rukh Khan, playing different facets of himself in all his movies. But then, the joy of watching a Kitano movie lies in observing the cliches that he has mastered &#8211;  the silent, brooding protagonist, the in-your-face violence that launches itself in extremely creative ways, Joe Hisaishi&#8217;s scores, the wisecracking foil played by Susumu Terajima, and the self-destructive ending. It&#8217;s not a problem being repetitive ( after all, most classic rockers made a fortune out of repetitiveness), it&#8217;s a problem when the repetitiveness becomes in-your-face, loud, and crass. None of these are attributes I would associate with a Kitano movie. <b>Fireworks<\/b> was a picture-perfect film. Every other minute of the movie, I would want to pause the player and just observe the frame, each moment a cinematographic  masterpiece. After a very, very long time, I have this urge to paint (which is not necessarily a good thing, I know), because of this movie.<\/p>\n<p>Whoa whoa whoa, <a href=\"http:\/\/www1.economictimes.indiatimes.com\/articleshow\/476168.cms\">what do we have here<\/a>?  Francois Ozon&#8217;s <b>Swimming Pool<\/b> is all set to be released in Delhi sometime in March, and Bangalore\/Chennai in April. Not bad at all, though this will be the good-bits version, or maybe the good-bits-are-hidden-but-you-can-try-make-sense-out-of-what-we-show-you-version as decreed by our hallowed Censor Board.  <\/p>\n<p>I live in a country where you get live albums by Isaac Hayes at book sales for 60 Rupees a CD. I don&#8217;t know whether to be glad or pissed. ( Pissed because had I been a little late, someone else would have bought that CD. Damn)<\/p>\n<p>Did anyone notice the market for old comics in India? A fine example &#8211; Blossom Book House is selling copies of Indrajal comics from the seventies and eighties for 20-25 Rs each. Issues that have a cover price of 1-2 rs, and which are missing covers are being put up with these kind of prices, and surprisingly, <i>people are buying them at those prices<\/i>. Everytime I go there, the issues I saw the last time are gone, and more copies have come in, with similar prices. Makes me glad I filched all those old Indrajal comics off assorted cousins and uncles a decade ago. <\/p>\n<p>The more I look at Paris Hilton, the more I am reminded of Kareena Kapoor. Not a good thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As it turns out, I have been mispelling a writer&#8217;s name. Inspite of having read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, it took me a google search to figure out that Susanna Clarke&#8217;s first name is *not* spelt &#8220;Susannah&#8221;. Damn. Which means that the teeny little disclaimer about perfect spelling on my user-info does not hold [&hellip;]<\/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":[84,96,97,98],"class_list":["post-725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-acquisitions","tag-blah","tag-movies-2","tag-moviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725","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=725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}