Imagine

Last of the tiger

2010-02-10T20:33:00.005-06:00

tiger

RIP J.D.Salinger

2010-01-28T19:43:00.001-06:00

The Scene

2010-01-24T18:04:00.004-06:00

I just don't want to be in that scene. You know, the scene in the movies where I'm looking through the stacks of books, and the camera pans across away from me, behind me, and then tilts down and focuses on that one book that was meant for me, lying there waiting for me. The book is usually the key to the plot; later in the movie I would be running through heap-loads of trouble to get hold of just that book, because I didn't see it there and someone else picked it up. Getting it back would involve making a deal with the devil. And I don't want that, which is why I hate going to book sales.

But, despite my aforementioned reservations, I did end up going to one - both yesterday and today. You see my mind (not I) believes that knowledge, like all things precious, is hidden in a hole cut out in the middle of books, which is why I assume it's still miffed at me for not picking up that copy of 'The Trial' by Franz Kafka at that sale yesterday. And it kept imploring me to go back to the sale. It kept telling me that if I went to back to the sale today and it was still there, it would indeed be the book that that camera had focused on, and the deal with the devil, could be skipped.

But alas, it wasn't there. Or it was, and it was deja vu in a strange way. So I picked four other books instead, all for a dollar. Now my mind is complaining that if I'd just listened to it yesterday, it would have been so content for less than a dollar, instead of the forty odd dollars I'll now have to pay a psychiatrist for consultation plus the one dollar for all the books I got that don't have the title 'The Trial'.

'The Trial' better be a good now that I've now spent so much time thinking about it. I'll probably rent the book from the library (for free) tomorrow, but something tells me that's not going to assuage my mind. Oh well.

RIP Asheem Chakravarty

2009-12-25T13:25:00.002-06:00

I just learnt that Asheem Chakravarty, a member of the band Indian Ocean passed away today. May his soul rest in peace.

2009-08-27T22:05:00.001-05:00

Between our dreams and nightmares runs the rope upon which we live our lives.

Freedom Song

2009-08-15T08:32:00.003-05:00

People died fighting for a freedom
that is now locked up in a bottle.

Popped open at midnight
Look at freedom being sprayed across the room

Fireflies

2009-08-08T10:58:00.003-05:00

There's a scene in The Lookout, at the very start of the movie, where Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character is driving with his friends on a desolate road among farmlands, speeding in a convertible, with the roof down and the headlights off - a sea of fireflies flickering, hovering, just over them. That scene is one of my favorites (if only they had shot that scene for IMAX)! It of course leads to the event that sets the stage for the rest of the movie. But it's a scene that come to mind whenever I see fireflies around here. There's a clip of that scene on youtube.

Tron Legacy

2009-07-24T18:56:00.003-05:00

This trailer reminded me of a cartoon called The Real Adventures of Johnny Quest that I used to see years ago. (via Daring Fireball)

The Wrestler: Not a Review

2009-06-18T21:23:00.002-05:00

Someone I know hates A Beautiful Mind. He told me one of the reasons for not liking the movie was that he didn't like the way Ron Howard portrayed John Nash's schizophrenia. And for a long time I couldn't understand that, because I liked the movie. But slowly (after watching a lot more movies and having lots of discussions about movies with others) it dawned on me that in the name of making movies, movie makers often trivialize life and it's hardships, sugarcoating reality just so that the audience can feel good about watching it. These movies are made for the audience. Sometimes, these movies even mislead the audience. Reality is not always watchable, we all experience its downsides. Painting a rosy picture doesn't make the darker side of life go away. Thankfully there are people who still make movies to tell stories without the rose tinted glasses. Darren Aronofsky is one of them. In A Requiem for a Dream he told the story of four people whose dreams are shattered by substance abuse. Pi told the story of a mathematician whose quest for finding patterns drives him to the brink of madness. His latest movie, The Wrestler, tells us the story of a professional wrestler past his prime named Randy 'The Ram' Robinson, played effortlessly by Mickey Rourke. While the story is about a professional wrestler, it could have been about a musician, an actor, an athlete or anyone else who felt they were good at one thing and one thing alone. These could also be substance addicts - because isn't addiction a kind of passion as well? These people staked their lives for that one thing, which becomes their dream, and in the process gave up on things that most others consider a lot more valuable - family, friends and other things. But then one day things stopped working for them. And now its time for them to pay their dues. Unfortunately its too late now. The Wrestler is a story of such a person. The movie does not take sides, but it does a great job of telling both sides of the story - the joy of pursuing a dream, and the casualties it leaves behind. In some ways The Wrestler had a documentary feel to it. By the end it makes you care about the characters, and the lives they live - even the minor characters. And that's the reason I liked the movie.

Getting even with odd times

2009-05-31T11:22:00.002-05:00

I was discussing about my failed attempts at writing fiction with my friend Peeyush a few weeks ago when he suddenly came up with the idea of us collaborating on a work. The idea was that we take turns writing a chapter, each time taking it in the direction we want and infusing our own individual styles in it. Of course taking care that there is some sense of continuity between chapters. I loved the idea, although I'd a made couple of attempts with a similar project earlier and hadn't been very successful.(link). But this was a new opportunity, and I enthusiastically agreed.

Peeyush wrote the first chapter, which I felt was awesome enough to be a complete story by itself - compact with an excellent plot and ending. I then wrote the second chapter and since then we've been taking turns at adding to the story, one chapter at a time. The story as of this time has five chapters and I'm working on the sixth. While the story is not in any way complete, we have actively been working on it and we thought adding a link for the ongoing effort (even if incomplete, and may be even unpolished) on our respective blogs might be good. We may get some feedback as well. So today, I'm putting up the link to the story: Getting even with odd times.

Hope you enjoy reading it. Please feel free to give us your feedback/criticism!

Etudes by Aseem Kaul

2009-04-29T03:49:00.003-05:00

I've been reading Etudes, a collection of very short fiction, written by Aseem Kaul. The works in this collection have earlier appeared on his blog. Aseem Kaul is a talented writer is very good with words and this is especially evident in his poems, which I think have an astounding quality about them. But as for the short fictional pieces in Etudes themselves, I didn't really enjoy them as much. Although to be frank I haven't read all the works in the book yet, and there might be some exceptionally good pieces in there that I haven't yet read. But the works I read so far don't have the quality that you see in his poems and dialog pieces.

Freaky stuff!

2009-04-08T23:07:00.006-05:00

Freaky stuff happening here: I was reading a booklet accompanying a DVD of Chris Marker's two movies La Jetee (1963) and Sans Soleil (1983). La Jetee is supposed to be a movie composed entirely of photographs. I remembered reading about similar movies in Susan Sontag's collection of essays "On Photography", which I'm also currently reading. I kept the DVD booklet aside and picked up "On Photography" and the first word I read on the page I've accidentally opened is "Chris Marker" and about another of his movies called Si j'avais quatre dromadaires (1966) that is also composed entirely of still photographs. I kid you not! This is wierd!

By the way La Jetee is supposed to have been the inspiration for Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys (1995), which in my opinion had one of the most elegantly time travel plots I've seen so far. Turns out the main time travel plot is from La Jetee, which is amazing considering Chris Marker made the movie in 1963!

Ballad of a Soldier

2009-04-05T21:52:00.005-05:00

Last week, while browsing the DVD collection in the local public library I came across a Russian movie called Ballad of a Soldier (Ballada O Soldate). While the name of the movie didn't sound familiar the synopsis did - of a soldier going home for a very short visit to see his mother. I remembered having seen a similar movie with my family a long long time ago, probably when I was ten years old or younger. Of the movie I'd seen I could only remember the visuals of two distinct scenes - one of them involved the soldier rolling cigarettes out of a newspaper in a train for his fellow soldiers (and then at one point pulling a cigarette back from someone and unrolling it to show his own photo), and the second was where he's met his mother and going back. I couldn't even remember what language that movie was made in - it was that long ago. I wasn't sure if this was the same movie, so I rented it to find out.

Turns out it was indeed the same movie. Watching it brought back some fond childhood memories of watching rented movies on cassettes on a VCR. :-)

Stuff

2009-02-08T10:41:00.010-06:00

Late last year while visiting a friend in New jersey, we decided to go to the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), which was reopening that day. While we were there, we went to an open studio session of ceramics artist Zack Davis. A project he was working on at the time was to make several ceramic pots of sizes just large enough so that they would fit in a briefcase. Once the briefcase was full - these ceramic pots were still wet, not fired up - he would close it and take it wherever he went. This led to interesting and random interaction between the various objects in the briefcase. By the end of it - when the artist thought they were ready - these individual objects would have combined into a single object. One could still notice the shapes of the individual pots, but they were fused together. At that time I found it interesting, but wasn't sure how I was to think of it - an artist letting randomness play such a large role in his creation.

But then recently watching some documentaries of artists in the American Masters series, some of these things made sense. An artist is also a person who just enjoys creating stuff. Some might want to control how that stuff gets made up, but there are also those who are interested in the process, and they are content to go wherever the process leads them. Jackson Pollock was a believer in the latter (I think). And Zack Davis seems to be an artist in the same mould.

Now again a flashback to two years ago - I was visiting Washington DC with a few friends to see some museums. One of my friends had a GPS system that charted our route on a map, while we were driving. DC being such a strange city in terms of it's roads, we got lost (I was responsible for getting us lost :-)- several times. Trying to find our way we drove on several circuitous and not so circuitous routes. The GPS meanwhile charted all of that on the map, and the charted route was turning into something really interesting. We were creating a piece of "abstract art" just by driving around :-). I remarked that to my friends. But we didn't store that, and I soon forgot about that. But then a couple of days ago, mostly being inspired by the documentaries I was seeing (the latest one was about Alexander Calder) and what I'd seen of Zack Davis' work, I thought of trying something out.

So I took a large packing carton, bought some markers, and some sketching paper large enough to fit in the box. I then tied strings to the markers (I tried two colors - black and red) and hung them to the lid of the carton, with just enough string so that their tips touched the sketching paper at the bottom. I then put this carton in my car and drove to the downtown area, spent a bit of time there and then drove back home, all the time the markers in contact with the sheet. While the car was parked, the ink botted the paper, with the size of the blot proportional to the time it was stationary. And while I was driving the markers sketched lines and curves that were in a way controlled by the speed of the car, changing of lanes, turns that I took and so on and so forth. Of course this is (for me) very experimental. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to setup the markers so that they have free movement and are not constrained by anything other than the sides of the carton itself. Like everything else in this world, I'm quite sure someone has done this before. But it was fun trying this out for myself. So here it is, my first attempt called "To Hyperion and back" :-):

Life is a gift

2009-01-25T18:17:00.002-06:00

A while back my sister had an idea that if every family in Bangalore (where I was working at the time), adopted a stray dog, there wouldn't be any stray dogs left. I thought that was a great idea. Unfortunately as you can imagine it doesn't have much chance of being implemented. But then, today I came across another excellent idea (originally conceived by claypoole) on wolog.net. And it's such a nice idea, that I'm going to play along too. So here goes:

The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me!
My choice.
For you.

This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:

- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
- What I create will be just for you.
- It'll be done this year. No guarantees when, it will be a total surprise!
- You have no clue what it's going to be. I may draw or paint or knit something. I may bake you something and mail it to you. Who knows? Not you, that's for sure!
- I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.

The catch? Oh, the catch is that you have to repost this, and repost right away.
We can all make stuff and make someone's day a little bit brighter!
Don't respond if you aren't going to offer the same thing.

Love,
Satchit

P.S: Email me your address. You can find my email in the right hand column. Hope you play along.

Light Painting

2009-01-10T07:58:00.004-06:00

Light painting is a technique of creating a photograph by exposing selected parts of the subject by moving a narrow light source by hand (almost like brushing the scene with light), while using a long exposure. The technique works best when the ambient light is low. The technique comes in handy when you don't have sufficient lighting available. A major downside of light painting is that it involves a lot of trial and error. The two photographs above were both made using this technique, although I didn't know it was called light painting while I was making them. Also, I wasn't trying to get a light-painting like effect in these photographs. I was simply trying to do with whatever lights I'd available, which in the case of the above photographs was a penlight. But now I think I'm going to try to experiment some more. You can see some nice results of using this technique here and here. The latter has a video of use of the technique.

PFCOne 2008

2009-01-06T07:25:00.003-06:00

A great showcase for first time as well as up and coming film makers. Part of the PFC One annual competition, organized by Passion for Cinema, a collaborative blog/portal for and by film buffs.

2008-12-22T20:13:00.002-06:00

I can tell you why

People go insane

I can show you how

You could do the same
Shadow of the Sun (Audioslave)

Tears of Gandhari

2008-12-13T22:22:00.002-06:00

A rare point of view in an article by Devdutt Pattanaik written in the aftermath of 26/11.

Oh, My God

2008-12-13T20:46:00.002-06:00

Oh, My God was one helluva mind bender! It had it's cheesy parts, but loved the way the movie kept changing directions.

Rodney Rogers

2008-12-04T20:58:00.002-06:00

Ex-NBA player Rodney Rogers was seriously injured in an accident recently. According to reports he's paralyzed shoulders down. During his playing days, I knew of Rodney Rogers as a very determined and tough player on court. I remember watching him play a key role with the Celtics against the Nets in the fiercely fought Eastern Conference Finals in the 2002 Playoffs. While the Celtics lost that series, later he signed with the New Jersey Nets. I was thrilled when that happened, knowing the kind of player he was and the tough attitude he brought to the team everytime he was on the court.

I hope he shows the same determination and courage now in working his way back to getting healthy again. I wish him and his family all the best in this endeavor.

I'm sorry

2008-12-02T20:02:00.002-06:00

So here we are
Little drops of blood, dancing.

Pretty people naked, lighting
candles on a sweltering November night.

Someone out there thinks he must kill
and he succeeded tonight.

A couple who had made plans
to live forever, are no more.

A cop who told his wife
that he'll be home, is no more

No more are that man and woman
who were walking the streets, just because they chose the wrong time and place.

No more is a man who didn't want a candle lit for him
he just wanted to live another day.

He just wanted to speak to someone
he would have asked for a ray of hope, but it did not come.

All I can write is this piece of crap,
while someone out there lost someone they cared for.

I would like to tell someone that all will be well
but i know it won't be so.

They say tomorrow will be a new day
But not for those who died today.

I'm sorry!

Book Review: Himmelfarb by Michael Krüger

2008-12-01T22:25:00.003-06:00

I do not consider myself to be an adventurer when it comes to most things including books, music and movies. I depend on and trust the recommendations of others. But then often times I feel like trying out something new - something random. I tell myself that doing this I might discover something really novel. But then I never actually do that. There were plenty of book/music in the "must-read" list (based on the recommendations I'd received) that I never felt motivated to experiment. But a few weeks ago I finally took a step. I was in the public library in town and as an experiment, I walked about the book shelves, closed my eyes and then pointed in a random direction. The book that my finger would be pointing towards would be the book I read next. That book turned out to be Himmelfarb written by Michael Krüger, and translated by Leslie Willson. The synopsis seemed interesting enough - Just around the Second World War, a young German ethnologist named Richard takes a Jewish guide (against the advise of his Nazi advisor) named Leo Himmelfarb to the jungles of South America to study the tribes. But as it turns out Richard finds himself sorely out-of-place there, while Himmelfarb soaks in everything about the place and the culture. Then Himmelfarb gets very sick and thinking he's closer to death dictates a manuscript of their work there to the Richard, who in turn promises to have it published. Richard heads back home (leaving Himmelfarm behind) and promptly publishes the book under his own name and becomes famous as a result. Now on his eightieth birthday, he receives a letter out of the blue from Himmelfarm who survives the sickness after all, and who has seen his own book plagiarised. The book is written as a first person account of Richard's frame of mind upon reading that letter and experiences and flashbacks of his and Himmelfarb's time in the South American forests, interspersed with sketches of Himmelfarb and all of this annotated up by his (Richard's) own opinions and complexes.

The synopsis, and the first half of Himmelfarb - the book - showed promise of creating two interesting characters with two very different backgrounds and great plotline of their interaction. Unfortunately I felt that Michael Krüger doesn't do a great job of developing them well. When I finished the book, thinking about the book I was also disappointed in the way the story was put together. While reading it, I felt the author may tie things up in the end, but that never happened. The book, especially in the second half, often times felt like a television soap opera with new characters being brought in, introduced briskly and then going away - almost like the author had a goal for number of pages/words for the book that he was trying very hard to meet. In addition, flashbacks were brought in when they were least expected - and felt completely out of place at the point in the book where they appear. The way they were handled also gave the impression of being more page fillers than an inspired piece of writing. When I started reading the book I was really interested in the characters of Richard and Leo Himmelfarb - and how their vastly differering backgrounds would affect their views and their behavior, especially when they met. The book does start out well and begins to sketch out the characters, but then as it develops, it doesn't hold up. While a lot can be learnt about Richard's character because he is the narrator, Himmefarb's character comes across as very sketchy. The end result was that I came away disappointed as the book seemed to promise certain things, but it didn't deliver them. I don't elaborate on some of these in order to avoid giving away spoilers.

That said, I'm keen to read Michael Krüger's other works. The back cover of Himmelfarb (ironically) had reviews about one of his other books called The Man in the Tower. Hopefully I'll be able to read this in the not too distant future.

Related: I came across a review of Himmelfarb on NY Times. You may want to read this to get another perspective on the book.

Rock On, Songwriters, etc.

2008-11-20T22:23:00.002-06:00

Riff and I happened to discuss songwriters when we spoke a few weeks ago. The topic came up when we started talking about the song Riff's working on, which is for his school. The topic soon moved to vocalists - Riff said his respect for vocalists has increased since he started working on the song, especially now that he's working on the phrasing. Very soon Rock On - the movie - came into the picture. Riff felt that the phrasing for the songs in that movie were pretty bad. Interestingly, a writer at Split magazine who reviewed the movie didn't like the songs either, but in his case he was referring to the lyrics, not the way they were sung. As for me, I loved all the songs on the album. In fact I heard just two of the songs in repeat mode for about two weeks. I also liked the lyrics. They weren't "great", but they certainly weren't bad, and they were perfect given the setting of the movie. From Rock On, the topic moved to songwriters.

The vocalists/songwriters we spoke about that day were Ian Gillan, David Gilmour, Ronnie James Dio, Robert Plant, David Coverdale, Joe Hughes, and Ozzy Osbourne, in that order. I thought I would share some of my views about these songwriters. Note that these are just my thoughts and only about the songwriting skills of these vocalists, not their singing.

Ian Gillan: Now Ian Gillan's lyrics are very simple - a lot of them like Ted the mechanic, Smoke on Water discuss his personal experiences (literally, no metaphors here :-). They are no-brainers and no attempt is made to sound philosophical. In fact that is one reason I like his songs.

The songs written by David Gilmour (and Pink Floyd songwriters in general) on the other hand have much more depth to them; they have a mystical quality about them. Riff and I discussed the starting words of 'Sorrow' - "Sweet smell of great sorrow lies over the land" - imagine the combination of words - "sweet smell" and "great sorrow". How does one think of lyrics like these? I've tried to come up with lyrics sometimes like " rain drenched troubled furniture", but they are no where near the mystical quality of Pink Floyd songs. And sorrow isn't the only one. High Hopes, Learning to fly,, Comfortably Numb. Pink Floyd songs whether they've been written by Gilmour, Roger Waters, Richard Wright (RIP), Syd Barrett (RIP) have had this quality. Their songs remain enigmatic even after you've heard them hundreds of times. They say a "A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say". Pink Floyd songs in this sense are true classics (And no rock fan will debate that).

But then not everyone is a David Gilmour. Not everyone can smoke pot and write coherent yet wacky songs like these. But then not everyone is an Ian Gillian either - write songs simple enough to be understandable, yet not banal. Kansas songs had a similar quality. I'm not a lyrics person - when listening to songs I rarely pay attention to the lyrics. I pay attention to the music and the sound of the vocalist in relation to the other instrumental tracks. But with Kansas, I actually started paying attention to the lyrics too. They were not hard for me to follow and they were very nice. They had a certain ring to it, that made them memorable. Dust in the Wind, Carry on Wayword Son are of course well known. Among the lesser known songs by Kansas - check out Portrait (about Einstein), Closet Chronicles (a song about Howard Hughes).

Ronnie James Dio is considered a great song writer by legions of metal and music fans. But frankly, I don't understand his songs or the references that he uses in his songs. I told Riff that for me Ronnie James Dio is somewhere between the David Gilmours and Ian Gillians of the world. Holy Diver is considerered a classic song both in terms of the song in general as well as the lyrics, but for me they make no sense. The songs he wrote for Black Sabbath - falling from the edge of the world, etc. are a little simpler to understand, but again they are nothing spectacular. They deal with topics that Black Sabbath's music dealt with at the time - the religion, apocalypse, etc, and they do convey these well in the form of a good song, but I don't understand the "greatness" of it.

Robert Plant - Riff said humorously that almost all his songs deal with a woman and love. Including "stairway to heaven" which involves a woman - some woman. I once read a comment by Jimmy Page that it was after Robert Plant penned 'Stairway to Heaven' that he recognized Plant's songwriting abilities. Jimmy Page, may be, not me. I can't make sense of that song.

David Coverdale - I've only heard 'soldier of fortune', on which he collaborated with Ritchie Blackmore. I like that song - I can listen to the song hundreds of times and more without getting tired of listening to it.

Joe Hughes wrote Stormbringer with David Coverdale. Riff said the song is excellent. I've heard the song, but never paid attention to the lyrics.

Ozzy Osbourne - One thing about his songs - at one point of time I used to spend nights in office because it was too late to get any kind of public transportation to get back home. I used to spend those nights listening to music. Ozzy Osbourne's songs (from his solo career) were the only ones that could keep me awake all night long. His songs are not enigmatic, they are simple and again deal mostly with darker issues that metal generally deals with.

Now coming back to Rock On (you didn't think I was going to let this go so easily, did you! :-). Javed Akhtar wrote those songs. I think everyone (including those who hate the lyrics of Rock On) will agree that he is a great lyricist and poet. For the movie, he had the challenge of having to write songs that appear (in the movie) to be written by a rock band - a band that doesn't really have much success. And they have to feel like they were Rock and Roll songs. The songs sung by the band in the movie certainly convey that. The two other songs in the movie that play in the background on the other hand are much better songs and have excellent lyrics. Why would there be so much difference in the quality of the songs written by the same person for the same movie? Probably only if he really meant to have it that way.

Hey, I'm no judge of what makes for a great song or a Rock and Roll song, but I loved everyone of those songs. They had an Ian Gillian - quality to them. They were not great songs, but they were certainly not bad. They were no-brainers, and were catchy. If those songs weren't in a movie, but were instead sung by a real band at a concert I was at, I think I would most definitely be singing along just like has been shown in the movie. For me that's what makes a good song.

2008-11-16T11:39:00.003-06:00

Shing^tingle Shing^tingle
the chimes they sing

the wind whistles around
as the pipes ring

I walk towards the copper glow
green grass, green green grass, make thy pride show

dance with me now
dance with me

As the sweet smell of the once forgotten rain
fills my senses slow