Monday, December 29, 2003
Touch of Evil
Now that�s a classic. Especially if you watch the result of Walter Murch�s effort at putting together the movie as close as possible to Orson Welles� original vision. Racy, fast-paced and intensely involving, it puts to shame many of today�s efforts to try and create thrillers. There are trademark Welles� dialogue-delivery and staging techniques. There is also a characteristic inventiveness and clever use of the medium; again putting to shame, many of today�s so-called renaissance men of cinema.
Come September
I thought Come September was just another slick, clean, studio-made love story. The movie is full of double entendres. If you want to watch a cleaner, but gaudier version, watch MGR�s very enjoyable Anbe Vaa.
Claustrophobia
I keep having recurring nightmares about being trapped in an underwater/subterranean cave. I woke up from one such, the other day to a situation that was as close I could get to it in real life. I had to clean the deepest recesses under the concealed kitchen counter.
Unrelated: the cleaning session ended on a philosophical note about how to clean the fine dust accumulating inside a vacuum cleaner.
Barry Lyndon
I don�t think anybody who could watch this movie keenly would ever call it lengthy or boring. It got awards for its best aspects: cinematography, set design, costume design and music; and not to mention for Kubrick�s genius in direction and screenwriting.
The static or lingering visuals closely resemble landscape paintings from the late 18th century. If you can get hold of pictures of (a) John Constable�s paintings, or (b) a DVD of the movie, try and also get the other and compare the visuals.
What intrigues me most is the casting of Ryan O�Neal. Whatever said, I am fully convinced and am pretty certain that a better subtle-yet-strong actor like the one to play a Machiavellian Sicilian, would have taken the movie elsewhere; in fact, with such a performance bereft of any good humour, the irony would have heightened, in keeping with the satirical and wryly humorous tone of the 1st part of the film. Probably the only reason O�Neal�s acting appears fairly convincing in the 2nd part, is because of the awkwardness of Bullingdon played well by Leon Vitali. Despite what I might consider to be a mistake in casting, the character of Barry does not come across as jarring, vague or unconvincingly funny, because of Kubrick�s filmmaking genius only.
I would love to watch this movie on the big screen. I continue to consider Kurbick a key influence for myself, because of a shared love for a less wide frame, the penchant for classical music, dark humour, amongst other things, now only to be reinforced through the aesthetics and technology of Barry Lyndon.
Tuesday, December 23, 2003
Natural accompaniment to great music
It is raining in Chennai today.
Zbigniew Preisner
Ever since I saw Krzysztof Kieslowski�s Dekalog, I have been taken in by Zbigniew Presiner�s music and score. Now that I have thoroughly seen another Kieslowski masterpiece, Trois Couleurs (about a dozen times frame-by frame), I have fallen in love with his music. Braving the rain (welcome rains for the parched city) today, I rushed to Landmark just so that I could purchase, probably the only copy of Priesner�s music commercially available in Chennai: The soundtrack of Rouge. I now own some really great music.
For your listening pleasure, here is some wonderful music
There are three tracks available on the site to listen to. I can proudly say that ever since I stumbled upon the website, I have listened to those track over and over again continuously, especially Marionettes from La Double Vie de Veronique.
I rarely make my wishes public, mainly because of a little fear of ridicule, and a greater fear of providence, which having heard me aloud, usually conspires to not make my wish come true. My dream is to make a film one day, which I can get Preisner to score the music for. I do not fear the spoilsport of a sharp-eared fate now, for if I ever get to work with Preisner, it would only be a bonus.
Thanks to Jag for the inspiration to write about music.
Sunday, December 21, 2003
At the races
Thanks to passes my uncle got from a business contact, I was at Irungattukottai today to watch the National Racing Championships. I am not much of a racing fan, and don�t know much either. I�ve never been to a race in my life, so �understeering�, �cornering�, �Formula XYZ� etc. are totally unfamiliar territory. Nevertheless, the races, and the people were interesting to watch. This part of the world doesn�t get cooler than this any other time of the year, yet the complimentary cold beer was welcoming. I tried my best to stay in the shade, but I was dragged along to the pit lane as my uncle had to meet some people.
I got a close look at the track, which looked only slightly better than the highway next to it. I got a chance to see first-hand what I had otherwise only seen on TV, or heard some friends conversing about. I was a lucky kid! (Though mostly undeserving). I also got a chance to see Narain Karthikeyan and Karun Chandok, who wisely stayed away from much of the high-speed action on this tarmac. Also seen, were a couple of firang chicks who had been flown in from god-knows-where just so that they could hold the lap board at each passing car, wave the flag (might as well have dropped a drag-race type hankie), and generally spend the rest of the time giggling at rich old men and taking an occasional break inside an air conditioned trailer: they already seemed pretty prepared for the heat, going by the amount of clothing they were wearing.
Despite all the local support for the lads from Chennai and Coimbatore, the most exciting racer was Ms Kieho Ihara from Japan. Did you see that chick race machaan? She beat the shit out of the guys! was a spontaneous reaction from another racer who was thankful that he was not part of the group of losing Formula LGB veterans. I did enjoy a day at the races; watching with interest what I would otherwise dismiss as gaudily stickered and noisy, souped-up Marutis. Today also happened to be a day when, strangely I met half a dozen people whom I hadn�t seen in three or four years. Not bad for a day which only ended with two Disprins.
Trois Couleurs
Must watch! Again and again! These three movies: Bleu, Blanc & Rouge are separate movies whose storylines hardly have any concrete connections, but they work best when seen in sequence. As Kieslowski commentator Annette Insdorf says: the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. And if you watch it (them), please watch each movie more than once. Multiple readings work magic on the viewer.
Friday, December 19, 2003
I dont know who nominated me... But thanks a lot!
Meanwhile
I did this as well for my class reunion.
This semester�s project
Started this semester by choosing a topic and a staff guide for my research project. I wish to keep at least this semester�s project as �practical� as possible, and not merely something of (pardon the pun) academic interest.
Indian Tiger, Chinese Dragon, and other international creatures
My �review� of AR Rahman�s Warriors of Heaven and Earth�s music is available at Living in India.
Tuesday, December 16, 2003
The Deer Hunter
There are those films that involve and occupy you so much that they drain you. This is one of those films that gets inside you very easily that you can emote with it. As somebody who wants to make films, it makes me say to myself �What the heck are doing sitting at home and watching DVD�s for? Get out there, and try matching up.�
Krzysztof Kieslowski
When you watch a film and learn more about it, you not only learn about the art of filmmaking that the director can teach you, but also the art of being a filmmaker. Biographies, DVD bonus material, and, sometimes even trivia have a purpose. They can teach the latter. I have been quite an admirer of Kieslowski�s films, and now I have got to learn more about him. If Stanley Kubrick taught me the arrogance a filmmaker needs to possess, Kieslowski has taught me the humility that is as important, to be successful.
Strange, that I have for teachers those whom I�ve never met and never will have a chance to: they will never know me too. But yet we have communicated a lot.
Creating nostalgia
Music is capable of making the listener feel nostalgic about something he or she might never have experienced before. I bought the soundtrack for the Coen Brothers� film O Brother Where art thou? I, for certain have never experienced anything to do with the setting of the film, yet I can feel for it. Music can do that! Even a good film can do this I guess.
Learning to let go
This was one topic we used to debate a great deal in Loyola. Where does ownership and authorship end? A piece of art � a painting, poetry or film, is after all a creation of a person - the artist. So the creator has all rights over his �baby� right? But this is not always possible. Sometimes, despite an auter�s attempts to be interpreted in one particular way, films are understood in a different, and sometimes even in a contradictory way. Do we just label it a failing of the director to communicate? There can never be perfect communication. So the best thing for a creator is to learn to let go. Once a creation goes into public domain, misinterpretation, over-interpretation, accolades and brickbats are all inevitable. Sometimes our creations seem to have minds and destinies of their own. For all the political, moral and ethical beliefs we stand for, we have to learn to let go.
Saturday, December 13, 2003
4: Consumerism and Wrapping woes
As a continuation (of what my mother reminded me) of a tradition followed by my grandfather, we started to wrap the new books in fresh paper jackets. We fished out some exquisite handmade paper and began wrapping the books, only to realise that the books that now looked like neat little-schoolboys-in-the-morning, would, after a couple of reads look like dirty little brats, especially their nice handmade-paper jackets. I went out to buys some plastic wrapping sheets. As luck would have it, not a single stationery store in the vicinity had any (neither the stuff nor the staff with intelligence enough to understand what I wanted). I even paid a visit to a supermarket, in vain. Finally a store stocked the exact variety, with the exact transparency and the exact thickness; just that they called by some weird name and not �plastic wrapping sheet�. After a brief struggle to locate it, the store hand told me that I could only buy it in meters: I had wanted one and a half. OK! No problem! After all, this is not exactly going to rot if not used. But on closer inspection, I found the sheets to be damaged. As these things came in tubular rolls, I told the guy to get me two meters from a scratch-free mid section of the bundle. The fellow was taken aback. How could I have demanded that he waste a couple of feet from the free end of the roll? I told him that it was none of my business that he was not gonna sell those damaged parts, and I could never buy sheets that did not serve the purpose. He refused to oblige me by saying some cock and bull stories about it not being viable to cut out a mid section. I was about to argue about why I need to pay for his careless storage when I realised why the bundle was so damaged in the first place: with this kind of attitude, he couldn�t have sold an inch of that thing to any self-respecting patron. I quickly walked out and walked quite a distance to an old store. One I used to frequent as a kid, but later gave up on, because there were other new stores much closer. As I walked in, the old man (who in all my waking memory has always remained as old) who assists in the store, joyfully whooped on seeing me after all these years. After a weak smile and making up an excuse of �too much studies�, for not visiting his store for so long, I told him I needed plastic book wrapping. It was his turn to smile a wry smile. He knew exactly what I wanted without me having to explain, but he had just run out of stock.
I half angrily stomped home while my temper clock reminded me that I needed dinner. Luckily, we were able to improvise with some plastic card pouches, that when cut open and secured with tape, served the wrapping purpose fairly well: an excusable compromise. Work done, eaten, blogged... time for Kurosawa, Cimino, Peckinpah, Kieslowski, Joffe and co. to start working on me.
3: Happy birthday
My belated birthday celebrations actually made the rest of the day. It involved a trip to T Nagar under a reluctantly forgiving sun and into a bookstore where you take your shoes off before entering. My mother decided to gift me a Kalki book set: Sivagamiyin Sabatham, Paarthiban Kanavu, Ponniyin Selvan and Alai Oasai. As an extra, and as a slight reminder to myself of my rusty linguistic skills, I got Pizhaiyindri Nalla Tamizh Ezhuduvadu Eppadi. I was now carrying the bag of my dreams: one section filled with movies and another with books. The rest of the afternoon involved buying clothes, and a chance meeting with Yuvan Shankar Raja at a restaurant.
2: Queue? (Sounds almost like a franco-latin interrogative)
Then it was a trip to AU to pay my semester fees. The queues were extraordinarily long and moved very very slowly. For about 15 minutes into my wait, I thought that the procedure at the other end was time-consuming, but soon realised that there was a whole new reason for the delay. Each of those persons in the queue carried not just his/her pay order, but also of ten other friends. OK, this actually saves time because one person taking care of things for a whole group actually makes things quicker. But I was absolutely irritated to find out that these guys had joined the queue with only their papers, but had accepted insertions along the way. Why the heck should I share the burden of another lazy person�s queue-time, while he or she chilled at the cafeteria, waiting for the receipt to delivered? A couple of good friends asked me to carry their drafts for them, but I refused point blank. No! Why? Are all these people, waiting in line for the past one hour, fools? After close to two hours, a whole lot of bitterness and painful stiffness in my knees, I triumphantly finished the payment procedure in a matter of seconds and staggered on to lunch. I was famished. The lunch brought back more than a sense of fullness. It brought my cheer back.
When I got cranky as a kid, my grandmother used to blame it on hunger. I, in further insult of my righteous reason having been patronisingly ignored, used to kick and scream my way through mouthfuls of food and eyes full of tears. But as my stomach began to fill, my anger magically vanished; with not even a little bit remaining to �fig leaf� my pride. Nevertheless, my family hardly used to rub it in, and even if they did, it couldn�t make me angry; I was full of food and cheer.
So here�s a trick that works for me. When extremely bad-tempered, eat well.
1: Assistant director
This morning started off rather tame, and in fact on a sombre note. A good friend of mine who�s a talented prospective filmmaker, alas, an unlucky one, was relating yet another tale of disappointment. At times I feel a murderous rage against the so-called producers in mainstream cinema. They are spineless debauched pimps who are in the business only to seek the cheapest way to make money. They blind themselves to opportunity and surround themselves with flattering parasites and bad counsel. They make false promises, fool themselves and people around them, and more often than not, pay dearly later. At times I feel I have no business in aiming to feed these rascals by staying in this business. Most often I need these very rascals to produce movies for me. I just hope I�ll have the courage, the ability and the fortune to break out of this cycle of dependence: Soon!
But my friend did not seem half as angry I was. He�s seen too much to be really bothered by just another letdown. It was time to cool off, talk movies and watch movies. As he left on yet another appointment with yet another producer, he let me borrow from his rather large and exquisite DVD collection.
Wednesday, December 10, 2003
Calling all Caws...
Every morning, lots of people in my neighbourhood follow the tradition of feeding the crows before eating. I do not know if the tradition warrants it, but most people make crow calls while placing food on ledges, parapets and balconies. Some people use the reasonable �Kaa Kaa� while others keep crowing for quite a while. There are those whose loud calls sound more like they are shooing away the crows; and there is a weak-voiced lady whose �Kaa Kaa� sounds more like a mobile phone SMS alert �Beep Beep�. My dad has an authoritarian call that sounds more like a warning to �better eat this�, while my grand mom calls out to �Krishna...�. When I was a kid I tried a real authentic crow imitation but nowadays I prefer not to call at all. After having heard a gamut of cries ranging from barks, to pleads, to beeps, to screams, today I herd a clincher. I guess we have new neighbours. The gentleman sounded like Toshiro Mifune in full force. The crows don�t seem to mind. They get nicely fed on hot cooked rice every morning; of course, they occasionally have to compete with some energetic chipmunks.
Framing in Cinemascope
Choreography and composition are important facets of any art (performing or visual). Cinema, which borrows heavily from theatre in terms of choreography, has a few distinct features of its own that can be exploited. One has to watch Welles� Citizen Kane to see what can be accomplished in the cinema frame, especially with regard to the third dimension. Directors like Kurosawa had excelled in horizontal composition with a long lens. But you necessarily cannot term the frames �flat�. (The opening scene in The Hidden Fortress is a good example) Currently, almost all mainstream Tamil and Indian films are being made with cinemascope lenses. One has to just watch a group song number in any arbitrary film to know what this has done. You have the case where a group of 20 or so dancers are placed in a flat composition (like one in a group photo) and dance to the camera. This is one kind of composition that comes straight out of standard theatre. And audience cannot take any other position while watching a stage show, but the film camera can. Yet these long-lens, wide-frame pictures don�t seem to acknowledge that. Another thing I feel, a 1:2.35 frame finds difficult to do, that a 1:1.33 frame can do easily, is stage in depth effectively. The technical failings of the anamorphic lens can be surmounted, but the aesthetics of a wide frame cannot be altered. A triangular composition (one of the primary types of depth-compositions) is flattened out in cinemascope, almost defeating the purpose unless used properly. In the widescreen format, there is a definite propensity to make effortless, flat pictures; and most of our filmmakers are doing it. This is in addition to the fact that there is hardly any on-screen or camera choreography. Using cinemascope is a tougher art. One can easily create flat pictures. While composition & choreography within the frame is a challenge in itself, composing despite the frame is a bigger one.
Tuesday, December 09, 2003
FAB analysis of The Nation
Staying with the idea of marketing India, there is a difference between marketing for purely economic considerations, and marketing a �Nation� based on what it stands for. The battle for �Mindshare� over marketshare is an existing concept, and while marketing a nation, what is termed as �soft power� plays a huge role. Soft power is something nations, political ideologies, civilizations, religions, cultures etc. exercise. Compared to all other products in the same category (i.e. amongst all developing nations), India�s USP can be found in the strength of its democracy, and its constitutional fabric that is liberal, pluralistic, egalitarian and based on justice. Even though India�s political system leaves a lot to be desired, its fundamental fabric of democracy is strong even though very young. Not all our economic, strategic and cultural competitors can boast of that. Now the features are there, the benefits (what are eventually marketed) can easily be surmised: A long-term, geopolitical and economic partner in world politics, that would genuinely be admired by people, and not just lobbied for by vested interests.
This is how I would market India�s soft power for the long-term. Not by showing Bombay cinema and classical dancers with computers.
Sunday, December 07, 2003
What I have been upto
Check this out. Of course, you'd enjoy it better if you were part of my class.
Saturday, December 06, 2003
Explaining my semester project
My last semester�s academic project on the �diegesis� centred on what I had termed the �simplestory and the superstory�. To put it in more non-academic terms, a simplestory is one that is small in scale, complete in terms of motivations and more plausible and sensitive to basic human emotions: contrasted with the superstory, that is epic in proportion, more long-term logical, and almost always lacking in basic motivations. To explain with an example, in a simplestory, a person�s death is an important event; while in a superstory, like in war stories, death is another statistical trifle.
This post-modern, post-structural view of stories, I proposed, could be used to analyse almost any kind of narrative: from mythological epics, to news, to archaeology, to macroeconomics. In a deSica neo-realist film, unemployment is the protagonist, whereas in capitalist economics, there requires to be a certain level of unemployment if one is to contain inflation.
No story is pure simplestory or pure superstory. There are elements of each in every narrative. Take our epics. The Mahabharatha and the Ramayana, The Iliad, or The Odyssey, in their abridged forms are perfect superstories: they gloss over many things, in the sense that if one were to ask the questions �Could this happen �here� and �now�?� or �Could this have happened �then� and �there�?� the answer would be a definite �No!� That is the whole deal with mythological stories and that is what makes them fascinating; enigma is what makes a myth.
History, on the other hand, is also superstory, but it is more substantiated compared to the myth. Most of the substantiation comes from authorship (author here is not the originator of the story but the narrator or �re-teller� of the story). One technique employed to un-mythify or historify a myth is to give it substantiation and authorship. Idolatory and authorship in religious mythology serves this purpose of historification. All religious texts, though having evolved over time, are assigned singularly identifiable authors in order to give credibility. Pilgrim sites and relics serve the same purpose. The VHP tried to historify a myth by claiming that a town in UP is the Ayodhya of the story.
Thus, the superstory can be further classified as synchronic or diachronic. Synchronic is when the retelling takes place at one point in time, like in the archaeological story. Diachronic is when the retelling has taken place through time. A synchronic diegesis appears more scientific and objective whereas a diachronic, or �evolved� diegesis is liable to be easily dismissed. That is why attaching dates is important if a myth has to sound like history. This took place �then� and �there�.
Basically, elements of a simplestory substantiate the superstory. Cinema is very much like the superstory. It has unexplained motivations and people do not question illogicality and incompleteness. Film students talk of a term called Medias Res. Every retold story starts in medias res. It is the human audience�s ability to find �closure� that results in successful diegeses. This need and ability to find closure comes out of the fact that when it comes to diegeses, there are no authors and audiences, but only a series of �re-tellers�. Exposition creates re-teller interest, and motivates closure, and therefore is the cornerstone of successful storytelling.
Exposition lies in capturing simplestory sentiments. Let this model of the diegesis not be misunderstood as superstories garnished with simplestories. The diegetic process is not that deliberate.
Phew! That was the crux of my project. Why am I putting it up here? Maybe someone, somewhere, sometime, might find some use for it.
Update 9th Dec: As a rejoinder to Chandrachoodan�s comment about advertising and TVC�s, I have to explain that even though advertising attempts to relate on a human-emotional level, and the fact that the stories told are smaller in scale, they are primarily superstories because they are loaded with rhetoric. Rhetoric is huge component of superstories; simplestories are non-rhetorical. The failure of some ad campaigns, according to me, can be attributed to the fact that they sometimes tend to be simplestories with hardly enough rhetoric. One example is the India Shining TVC. It has all the potentials of being a powerful treatise on national development but it fails on two counts. One, it is a badly put together set of visuals, therefore there is little aesthetic appeal; two, as I said earlier, there is hardly enough rhetoric. Good art tries to avoid rhetoric. That is why advertising and sometimes even cinema can never be �art�.
In conclusion: This theory of mine would be classified as a diachronic superstory. It is large scale and evolving.
Phaseology
I first saw Dhalapathi before I became the over-analytic ideocrat I now am. So here is my over-analytic ideocracy on this movie I saw again this afternoon. A rather �Scorsese�esque take on the Mahabharatha. Why Scorsese: The same episodic, sporadically sentimental and extremely violent handling of a classical theme. The style is termed Scorsese-esque just because Scorsese used it first. For all in India, this style is called Mani Ratnam-esque.
I have to admit, that though what we have quickly called the Mani Ratnam style is there to see, Mani Ratnam is stylistically more dynamic and evolving than most Indian directors. Probably Dhalapathy was the Scorsese �phase� of Mani Ratnam. There is also the hint of the Kurosawa phase, the Coppola phase, the Sergio Leone phase. Again, these phases are named after directors because most of their films were in that style and not because they claim authorship or sole propriety of it. Godfather showed an Arthur Penn phase, Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone showed a Kurosawa phase, Kurosawa showed a John Ford phase and a Shakespeare phase. Etc etc.
An interesting aside is how Coppola (in the context of The Godfather) explains the �depiction of violence� lineage and traces it to Shakespeare in western literature. I wonder whom Shakespeare attributes his style to.
No director has a distinct style to claim authorship over. What can truly be named a director�s original trademark? I have no answer now. But I do know that a truly good director is dynamic and evolving. K Balachandar still uses the same techniques he used 30 years ago. KB went through a Goddard phase, but both KB and Goddard seem to be stuck there.
Probably the most original (a misnomer) a director will ever get, is in his early movies. This afternoon I also saw scenes from Pandiyarajan�s AaN Paavam. Pandiyarajan is someone nobody today would call a master director, but AaN Paavam had some amazingly raw and fresh storytelling.
Today I happen to be in a �theorist� phase. That explains two very academic posts. Just the other day I was in wisecrack phase, and another day in a Woody Allan-esque mood. The day someone says to somebody, �Hey! That is very Anand-esque� is the day that term is born.
Kingley�s recent post about bloggers cutting heir nails is an exercise in Kirubasing, Anitaising, Jivhaising an event. Bajji had a Kingleyising and an Anandising of nail cutting. So, Anand-esque as a style is already there. We just have to call it that.
Friday, December 05, 2003
Psephologists, anti-incumberency and other excessive hyphenations
Words that would otherwise test my primary-school cousin�s spelling-skills have become household lingo. This election�s media coverage has been very interesting (as always). India prides itself on being a very successful democracy and these are opportune moments to show off our unmatched skills in running and analysing these huge exercises. I have been following only NDTV�s coverage. Our liberal press tried to fool itself (again) by thinking that the Congress is the liberal-socialist-secular flagbearer of our nation simply because it happens to be the only longstanding opposition to the apparently �rightwing� BJP. Opinion polls showed what we wanted to see for the sake of preserving our constitutional fabric: 3:1 Congress to BJP.
But now it is 3:1 BJP to Congress.
The BJP has won. We have to necessarily force ourselves to accept it, but we still want to assert that this time it has not been hindutva. Should the liberal press accept BJP when even Murli Manohar �Astrology� Joshi seems to talk about �other� issues?
So we do the �grapes are after all sweet� thing. These elections have been advertised as landmark in terms of technology; in terms of professional management; and for its feminist successes. Another thing we should realise is that the Congress party deserved what it got. The only thing that seems to go in its way with the intellectuals is its supposed liberal credential. But with the BJP seen as moving away from its traditional exclusivist-rightwing mould, the congress has lost even that credibility (if it ever genuinely possessed it).
So did the Hindu-Nationalist BJP win and the Liberal-Secular Congress loose? According to our TV experts, good governance, professional management, young blood and grassroots power won; while neo-feudal, personality-centric, non-performing, ivory-tower-leader politics lost. Hmmm... Good for the country.
BTW the electronic voting machines seem to work like a dream. Years ago I remember Prannoy Roy starting his result analysis programmes in the late afternoon on the counting day(s). This time it started by morning and it was all over by late afternoon. Quick: considering the scale at which voting and counting takes place in our populous country.
Eat my words
Indian bowlers have done a better job today. I just hope I haven�t spoken too soon. But what the heck? I don�t have an STB and can�t watch the match live.
Interesting work
I have been keeping my sleepy, lazy days filled with some work I�m doing for my school gang reunion website. I took out the old schooltime photographs from the recesses of the cupboard. Farewell day, Reverberations...Hey! Chandrachoodan and Nilu. You guys�re there in the pictures. CC wanna see the old you? ;)
Ungal Rock Nadikkum...
The latest Hollywood action flick to be dubbed in Tamil, expecting a successful run, is some movie with Rock. These movies, and those kung fu flicks from the 80�s Hong Kong are great candidates for Tamil dubs. One big advantage is that Cantonese translates with the same pace into Tamil. So the jarring speeds, at which the English-translated dialogues go, are thankfully absent.
Another result is that Chocky Jaan, Puroose Li, Aarnuld Svasneaker, Silvesterstaalun, and more recently, Jet Li and Rock are big stars here. Heck! Arnie would have won hands down from South Madras if not California.
Nocturnal
Every time life gets easy and the big worries are rid of, the small concerns surface. My latest headache involves my Internet connection. It appears that excessive surfing has greatly reduced my account balance. So I now have to surf when Internet is free. That�s between 11 PM and & 7 AM.
As expected, the speeds are great at night. Being vacation time, I can afford to wake up later than usual.
